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PHILOSOPHIES  :   ANCIENT  AND  MODERN 


WILLIAM  JAMES 


PHILOSOPHIES 

ANCIENT    6r>    MODERN 

Small  crown  8vo.,  is.  net  each  (by  post  is.  2d.  each). 

BERGSON.    By  Joseph  Solomon. 

EARLY  GREEK  PHILOSOPHY.    By  A.  AV.  Benn. 

STOICISM.     By  Professor  St.  George  Stock. 

PLATO.     By  Professor  A.  E.  Taylor. 

SCHOLASTICISM.    By  Father  Rickaby,  S.J. 

HOBBES.     By  Professor  A.  E.  Taylor. 

LOCKE.     By  Professor  Alexander,  M.A.,  LL.D. 

COMTE  AND  MILL.     By  T.  W.  Whittaker. 

HERBERT  SPENCER.    By  W.  H.  Hudson. 

SWEDENBORG.     By  Frank  Sewall,  M.A.,  D.D. 

NIETZSCHE.     By  Anthony  M.  Ludovici. 

SCHOPENHAUER.     By  T.  \V.  Whittakk. 

BERKELEY  AND  SPIRITUAL  REALISM.  By 
Professor  Campbell  Fraser,  D.C.L.,  LL.D. 

EPICURUS,  NEOPLATONISM,  Etc.  By  Pro- 
fessor A.  E.  Taylor. 

RATIONALISM.    By  G.  M.  Robertson,  M.P. 

PRAGMATISM.     By  D.  L.  Murray. 

London:  CONSTABLE  &  CO.  Ltd. 
10  Orange  Street  W.C. 


{Circa  1908.) 


By  kind  permission  of  Mrs.  Sears. 


THE  PHILOSOPHY 

OF 

WILLIAM    JAMES 


BY 

HOWARD    V.    KNOX 


LONDON 
CONSTABLE  &  COMPANY  LTD. 

1914 


PREFACE 

For  reasons  of  space  this  little  study  of  William 
James's  philosophy  has  had  to  restrict  itself  to 
the  essential  core  of  his  doctrine,  and  to  omit 
many  sides  of  his  singularly  rich  and  sympathetic 
personality.  Moreover,  I  felt  that  James  was  so 
supremely  excellent  a  writer  that  a  summary  of 
his  philosophy  would  be  best  given  so  far  as  pos- 
sible in  his  own  incomparable  language.  I  have 
accordingly  aimed  largely  at  effective  selection,  and 
at  stringing  together  his  own  expositions  of  his 
most  important  doctrines,  with  a  minimum  of 
explanatory  comment. 

But  I  had  a  further  reason  for  letting  James 
thus  speak  for  himself.  The  dazzling  brilliance  of 
his  style,  his  wonderful  ability  to  write  popularly 
and  vividly,  the  simplicity  and  directness  with 
which  he  goes  to  the  heart  of  every  problem,  and 
his  modest  disclaimers  of  systematic  finality,  have 
combined  to  render  it  difficult  for  professional 
philosophers  to  attend  to  the  technical  content  of 


vi  PKEFACE 

his  arguments.  It  seemed  important,  therefore, 
to  show  how  those  very  philosophic  contentions 
which  have  been  denounced  as  most  revolutionary 
are  actually  contained  and  technically  justified  in 
the  great  Principles  of  Psychology,  which  have  been 
universally  admired  and  acclaimed  as  a  classic. 
When  the  main  drift  of  that  work  is  properly 
understood,  the  organic  unity  of  James's  teaching 
becomes  manifest.  It  seems  charitable  to  suppose, 
therefore,  that  those  critics  who  have  complained 
of  the  '  merely  popular '  character  of  James's 
philosophy  have  not  troubled  to  acquaint  them- 
selves with  the  contents  of  his  magnum  opus. 


HOWAED  V.  KNOX. 


Oxford, 
January,  1914. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER 

I.  Introduction        .... 

II.  The  General  Function  of  Consciousness 

III.  Habit         ..... 

IV.  Personality  and  Continuity 

V.  Will 

VI.  Will — continued  .... 

VII.  Utility  and  the  Survival  of  Beliefs 

VIII.  Belief  and  Value 

IX.  The   Practical  Value   of    Theory    and    the 
Theoretic  Valuk  of  Practice 


PAG  E 

1 


25 
32 

4i 
49 

07 


94 


vu 


CHRONOLOGICAL  LIST  OF  WILLIAM 
JAMES'S  WORKS 


The  Principles  of  Psychology,  1891. 

Psychology  (Textbook),  1892. 

TJie  Will  to  Believe,  and  Oilier  Essays  in  Popular  Philo- 
sophy, 1897. 
.  Human  Immortality  :   Two  Supposed  Objections  to  the  Doc- 
trine, 1898. 

Talks  to  Teachers  on  Psychology ;  and  to  Students  on  Some 
of  Life's  Ideals,  1899. 
.    Tlie  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience  :  A  Study  in  Human 
Nature,  1902.     Being  the  Gifford  Lectures  delivered  in 
Edinburgh  in  1901-1902. 

Pragmatism:  A  New  Name  for  Some  Old  Ways  of  Think- 
ing, 1907. 

The  Meaning  of  Truth :  A  Sequel  to  Pragmatism,  1909. 

A  Pluralistic   Universe.     Hibbert  Lectures  at  Manchester 
College  on  the  Present  Situation  in  Philosophy,  1909. 

Some  Problems  of  Philosophy  (posthumous),  1911. 
•  Memories  and  Studies,  1911. 

,  Essays  in  Radical  Empiricism,  1912.  This  contains  the 
remainder  of  James's  occasional  articles,  ranging  from 
1884  to  1905,  but  does  not  represent  his  latest  views. 


ix 


x  WILLIAM  JAMES 

SOME  BOOKS,  ETC.,  ON  JAMES. 

La  Philosophic   de   William  James.      By   Th.    Flournoy. 

Saint-Blaise  :    Foyer  Solidariste,   1911.     An   admirable 

book,  which  gives  special  prominence  to  the  bearings  of 

James's  philosophy  on  religion. 
William  James.     By   Emile    Boutroux.     Paris :    Librairie 

Armand  Colin,  1911. 
The  same.     Translated  into  English  by  E.  and  B.  Hender- 
son.    London  :  Longmans,  Green  and  Co.,  1912. 
Introduction  (by  M.  Henri  Bergson)  to  Le  Pragmatisme 

(a  French  translation  of  Pragmatism).     Paris:  Ernest 

Flammarion,  1911. 
William  James.     By  Professor  B.  B.  Perry,  in  the  Harvard 

Graduates'    Magazine,   December,    1910.     Contains   a 

short  biography. 
William  James   and    his   Message.      By   Professor  L.    P. 

Jacks,  in  the  Contemporary  Revieiv,  January,  1911. 
In  Memory  of  William  James      By  Dr.  W.  McDougall,  in 

The  Proceedings  of  +he  Society  for  Psychical  Research, 

Part  62. 
William  James  and  his  Philosophy,     By  H.  V.  Knox,  in 

Mind,  April,  1913. 


WILLIAM  JAMES 


CHAPTEK  I 

INTRODUCTION 

William  James  (1842-1910)  is  probably  the  greatest, 
certainly  the  freshest  and  most  original,  thinker 
America  has  so  far  produced.  And  the  times  into 
which  he  was  born  were  such  as  to  stimulate  to 
the  full  his  natural  genius.  He  was  born  late 
enough  thoroughly  to  appreciate  the  significance 
for  human  thought  of  the  great  scientific  move- 
ment of  the  nineteenth  century,  which  culminated 
in  the  triumph  of  Darwinism  in  biology  (1859) ; 
and  yet  early  enough  to  enjoy  the  instruction  of 
one  of  the  greatest  naturalists  of  the  older  genera- 
tion— of  Louis  Agassiz — of  whom  he  said:  "The 
hours  I  spent  with  Agassiz  so  taught  me  the  differ- 
ence between  all  possible  abstractionists  and  all 
livers  in  the  light  of  the  world's  concrete  fulness, 
that  I  have  never  been  able  to  forget  it.  Both 
kinds  of  mind  have  their  place  in  the  infinite 
design,    but    there    can    be    no    question    as    to 

1 


2  WILLIAM  JAMES 

which  kind  lies  the  nearer  to  the  divine  type   of 
thinking."* 

In  virtue  of  his  position,  and  helped  no  doubt  by 
the  circumstances  of  parentage  and  training,  which 
brought  him  into  intimate  contact  with  the  religious 
and  artistic,  as  well  as  with  the  scientific  aspects 
of  life,t  he  was  the  first  thinker  to  realize  the  full 
significance  of  the  Darwinian  biology.  He  did  not 
conceive  it  superficially,  merely  as  the  last  blow 
struck  by  science  at  religion ;  he  perceived  that  it 
was  not  only  fatal  to  the  old  beliefs  about  the 
fixity  of  species,  and  the  crude  supernaturalism 
and  false  Platonism  of  which  that  belief  was  the 
main  support,  but  also  that  it  cast  a  profound 
doubt  on  the  final  adequacy  of  the  mechanistic 
philosophy  from  which  it  seemed  to  spring,  and 
of  the  metaphysical  prejudice  that  the  new  was 
nothing  but  a  disguised  form  of  the  old.  And, 
above  all,  he  perceived  that  the  characteristically 
Darwinian  principle  of  progress  by  individual  varia- 
tion must  profoundly  affect  our  judgment  of  the 
value  of  the  individual ;  while,  in  equal  measure, 
the  belief  in  the  real  kinship  of  all  living  creatures 
must  quicken  our  powers  of  vital  sympathy.     That 

*  Memories  and  Studies,  p.  14/. 

t  His  father  became  a  Swedenborgian,  and  he  himself  for 
a  time  took  art  to  be  his  vocation. 


INTRODUCTION  3 

strong  sense  of  individual  values,  which  is,  perhaps, 
James's  most  striking  mental  characteristic,  was 
without  doubt  native  to  him,  and  must  have  found 
expression  under  any  circumstances ;  but  the 
advent  of  Darwinism  gave  to  his  mind  the  precise 
scientific  cue  that  it  required.  For  of  all  the 
pre-Darwinian  prejudices  that  had  masqueraded  in 
the  guise  of  '  logical  principles,'  none  was  more 
inveterate  than  the  '  axiom  '  that  with  individual 
differences  science,  as  such,  had  no  concern ;  that 
such  differences  were  not  merely  unaccountable, 
but  literally  of  no  account.  Thus  James  was 
opportunely  helped  to  recognize  that  the  artist's 
sympathy,  which  not  only  lingers  lovingly  on  the 
concrete,  but  can  see  with  another's  eyes,  is  a 
scientific  and  philosophical,  as  well  as  an  aesthetic, 
asset — provided  always  that  it  is  the  aim  of  science 
and  philosophy  to  know  the  concrete  reality  of 
things.  The  real  foundation  of  James's  greatness, 
both  as  a  psychologist  and  as  a  philosopher,  lay 
in  this  keen  realization  that  every  new  outlook  on 
life,  every  personal  predilection,  has  an  inner  value 
which  only  "  a  certain  blindness  in  human  beings" 
prevents  most  of  us  from  appreciating.  The 
humblest  creature  has  its  special  way  of  laying 
hold  on  reality,  which  constitutes  for  it  a  revela- 
tion that  may  be  withheld  from  ourselves. 


4  WILLIAM  JAMES 

"  Take  our  dogs  and  ourselves,  connected  as  we 
are  by  a  tie  more  intimate  than  most  ties  in  this 
world ;  and  yet,  outside  of  that  tie  of  friendly  fond- 
ness, how  insensible,  each  of  us,  to  all  that  makes 
life  significant  for  the  other  ! — we  to  the  rapture 
of  bones  under  hedges,  or  smells  of  trees  and 
lamp-posts,  they  to  the  delights  of  literature  and 
art.  .  .  ." 

"  The  spectator's  judgment  is  sure  to  miss  the 
root  of  the  matter  and  to  possess  no  truth.  The 
subject  judged  knows  a  part  of  the  world  of  reality 
which  the  judging  spectator  fails  to  see,  knows 
more  while  the  spectator  knows  less  ;  and  wherever 
there  is  conflict  of  opinion  and  difference  of  vision, 
we  are  bound  to  believe  that  the  truer  side  is  the 
side  that  feels  the  more,  and  not  the  side  that  feels 
the  less."* 

"  Living  in  the  open  air  and  on  the  ground,  the 
lop-sided  beam  of  the  balance  slowly  rises  to  the 
level  line.  .  .  .  The  savages  and  children  of 
nature,  to  whom  we  deem  ourselves  so  much 
superior,  certainly  are  alive  where  we  are  often  dead, 
along  these  lines  ;  and  could  they  write  as  glibly 
as  we  do,  they  would  read  us  impressive  lectures 
on  our  impatience  for  improvement,  and  on  our 
blindness  to  the  fundamental  static  goods  of  life."  1" 

*  Talks  to  Teachers,  p.  230/.  f  Ibid.,  p.  258. 


INTRODUCTION  5 

As  an  illustration  of  James's  own  readiness  to 
find  wisdom  in  unlikely  quarters,  take  the  follow- 
ing :  "  An  unlearned  carpenter  of  my  acquaintance 
once  said  in  my  hearing  :  '  There  is  very  little 
difference  between  one  man  and  another  ;  but  what 
little  there  is,  is  very  important.'  This  distinc- 
tion seems  to  me  to  go  to  the  root  of  the  matter."* 

The  importance  of  individuals  is  evidently  a 
very  democratic  principle,  and  James  was  a  true 
American  in  holding  fast  to  it.  But  his  democratic 
faith  rests,  not  on  the  figment  of  a  natural  equality 
of  all  men,  but  on  a  deep  psychological  insight  into 
their  infinite  variety  and  personal  uniqueness.  He 
perceived  that  the  community  has  an  interest  in 
allowing  wide  scope  for  experiments  in  living  that 
may  lead  to  salutary  innovations.  Hence  he  made 
room  also  for  the  apparently  opposite  principle 
of  hero-worship. 

The  region  of  individual  variation  "  is  the  forma- 
tive zone,  the  part  not  yet  ingrained  into  the  race's 
average,  not  yet  a  typical  hereditary  and  constant 
factor  of  the  social  community  in  which  it  occurs. 
It  is  like  the  soft  layer  beneath  the  bark  of  the 
tree  in  which  all  the  year's  growth  is  going  on. 
Life  has  abandoned  the  mighty  trunk  inside,  which 
stands  inert  and  belongs  almost  to  the  inorganic 
*  The  .Will  to  Believe,  p.i256/. 


6  WILLIAM  JAMES 

world.  The  active  ring,  whatever  its  bulk,  is 
elementary.  If  individual  variations  determine  its 
ups  and  downs  and  hair-breadth  escapes  and  twists 
and  turns,  Heaven  forbid  us  from  tabooing  the 
study  of  these  in  favour  of  the  average !  On  the 
contrary,  let  us  emphasize  these,  and  the  import- 
ance of  these ;  and  in  picking  out  from  history  our 
heroes,  and  communing  with  their  kindred  spirits, 
in  imagining  as  strongly  as  possible  what  differences 
their  individualities  brought  about  in  this  world, 
while  its  surface  was  still  plastic  in  their  hands, 
and  what  whilom  feasibilities  they  made  impossible 
— each  one  of  us  may  best  fortify  and  inspire  what 
creative  energy  may  lie  in  his  own  soul."  * 

The  creative  energy  of  the  individual !  This  is 
the  dominant  note  of  James's  psychology,  and  it  is 
carried  forward  into  his  philosophy.  It  is,  in  fact, 
the  vital  principle  that  makes  of  his  psychology 
and  philosophy  a  truly  organic  whole,  whose  co- 
herence, unlike  the  so-called  '  perfect  coherence ' 
of  the  absolutist  '  system,'  does  not  exclude  the 
possibility  of  growth  either  in  knowledge  or  in 
reality.  His  interest  in  investigating  the  most 
general  principles  of  the  human  consciousness  is 
not  that  of '  reducing  '  individual  uniqueness  to  its 
average  expression,  but  that  of  exploring  the  field 

*  Op.  cit.,  pp.  258  and  260/.  (abridged). 


INTBODUCTION  7 

within  which  this  creative  energy  arises.  In 
psychology,  then,  where  others  had  carelessly 
assumed  it  was  '  unscientific  '  to  see  anything  but 
an  '  iron  system  of  law '  which  mocks  our  aspira- 
tions and  our  unquenchable  sense  of  moral  freedom 
and  responsibility,  James  found  a  vindication  for 
the  deep  reality  of  human  endeavour.  Personality, 
which  philosophers  had  naively  assumed  to  be  the 
source  of  error  only,  he  discovered  to  be  the  foun- 
tain also  of  truih  and  of  reality.  God,  whom 
theologians  (Calvinists)  had  sought  to  exalt  by 
contrasting  His  "eternal  bliss,"  "omniscience," 
and  "  omnipotence,"  with  the  miserable  estate  of 
His  "  creatures,"  he  invited  us  to  welcome  as  man's 
Great  Coadjutor  in  the  warfare  against  all  things 
evil.  He  has  thus  provided  a  rational  alternative 
to  the  protean  Fatalism  which,  under  the  name  of 
Materialism  in  science,  of  Absolute  Idealism  in 
philosophy,  and  of  Predestination  in  theology,  had 
been  held  up  for  our  admiration  as  the  necessary 
goal  of  enlightened  Reason.  Rightly,  therefore,  has 
he  been  called*  "the  last  great  Liberator  of  the 
Human  Spirit." 

*  In  the  dedication   of   Dr.    F.  C.   S.  Schiller's   Formal 
Logic. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE    GENERAL    FUNCTION    OF    CONSCIOUSNESS 

The  importance  of  James's  work  in  psychology  is 
two-fold.  It  was  immediately  recognized  by 
psychologists  as  directly  revolutionizing  their 
science,  and,  though  philosophers  have  even  now 
only  begun  to  recognize  this,  it  put  quite  a  new 
complexion  on  the  question  of  the  relation  of 
psychology  to  philosophy.  For  the  '  Critical ' 
studies  which  had  in  appearance  so  sharply 
differentiated  psychology  from  philosophy — if, 
indeed,  they  allowed  psychology  any  right  to  exist 
at  all — were  now  seen  to  be  based  on  psychological 
preconceptions  which  James,  as  a  psychologist,  dis- 
avowed and  overthrew.*  This,  fortunately,  absolves 
us  from  entering  here  on  the  futile  abstract  ques- 
tion of  the  relation  of  psychology  in  general  to 
philosophy  in  general.  We  have  only  to  consider 
the  relation  of  James's  psychology  to  the  new 
philosophy  which  it  inaugurates. 

*  See  infra,  pp.  34-40,  and  cf.  Mr.  D.  L.  Murray's  Prag- 
matism, chap.  ii.  (in  the  present  series). 

8 


FUNCTION  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS  9 

James  once  made  the  remark,  in  speaking  of 
Spencer,*  that  "  everyone  who  writes  books  or 
articles  knows  how  he  must  flounder  until  he  hits 
upon  the  proper  opening.  Once  the  right  begin- 
ning found,  everything  follows  easily  and  in  due 
order.  If  a  man,  however  narrow,  strikes  even  by 
accident  into  one  of  these  fertile  openings,  and 
pertinaciously  follows  the  lead,  he  is  almost  sure 
to  meet  truth  in  his  path.  Some  thoughts  act 
almost  like  mechanical  centres  of  crystallization 
facts  cluster  of  themselves  about  them." 

The  "fertile  opening,"  into  which  James  himself 
struck,  consists  primarily  in  a  special  application 
to  animal  and  human  consciousness  of  the 
Darwinian  conception  of  biological  utility.  The 
secret  of  Darwin's  scientific  success  was  his  firm 
grasp  of  the  principle  that  a  genuine  explanation 
of  biological  phenomena  can  only  be  given  in  bio- 
logical terms ;  and  that,  more  particularly,  an 
explanation  of  organic  evolution  must  be  couched 
in  terms  of  the  interest  of  the  organism. 

Now,  "the  pursuance  of  future  ends,  and  the 
choice  of  means  for  their  attainment,  are  the  mark 
and  criterion  of  the  presence  of  mentality  in  a 
phenomenon."!      By    connecting   this    with    the 

*  Memories  and  Studies,  p.  123  /. 

t  Principles  of  Psychology,  vol.  i.,  p.  8. 


10  WILLIAM  JAMES 

Darwinian  standpoint,  the  sciences  of  biology  and 
psychology  can  be  rendered  essentially  continuous. 
If,  however,  we  start  with  the  fixed  idea  that  it  is 
peculiarly  '  scientific  '  to  explain  physical  events 
solely  in  terms  of  matter  and  motion,  or  ether  and 
motion,  or  motion  pure  and  simple,  we  then  must, 
as  a  simple  matter  of  intellectual  tactics,  disavow 
our  own  spiritual  activity  in  the  manufacture  of 
these  recondite  and  uncanny  theories,  and  somehow 
contrive  to  get  rid  of  the  idea  that  consciousness 
really  counts  for  something  in  the  world  of  nature. 
Or,  again,  we  may  simply  wish  to  bring  this 
'  mechanical  hypothesis,'  or  bundle  of  hypotheses, 
to  the  final  test.  In  either  case  we  raise  the 
question  whether  the  so-called  intelligent  behaviour 
of  an  organism,  which  seems  to  betray  the  presence 
of  mind,  is  really  produced  by  mind  ;  or  whether 
such  outward  behaviour  can  be  wholly  and  suffi- 
ciently '  accounted  for '  by  the  physical  and 
chemical  processes  that  take  place  in  the  brain 
and  nervous  system  generally.  This  question, 
important  as  it  clearly  is  for  any  philosopher 
not  wholly  careless  of  the  concrete,  is,  in  its 
first  intention,  a  question  of  scientific  method  and 
of  scientific  fact.  It  is  the  question  whether 
(a)  physiology  must,  in  principle,  be  completely  in- 
dependent of  psychology,  and  {b)  whether  scientific 


FUNCTION  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS         11 

experience  confirms  this  postulate.  The  affirmative 
answer,  which  yields  the  theory  of  '  automatism,' 
or  '  parallelism,'  was  in  James's  early  days  almost 
universally,  and  is  still  commonly,  adopted  by  the 
physiologists,  who,  however,  have  not  always  in 
this  matter  been  fully  alive  to  the  difference  be- 
tween methodological  assumption  and  scientific 
verification — i.e.,  between  a  scientific  programme 
and  a  scientific  achievement. 

It  is  a  curious  anomaly  in  scientific  history, 
explicable  doubtless  as  a  reaction  from  the  excesses 
of  Paley-theology,  that  Darwinism,  which  is  steeped 
in  the  idea  of  the  interest  of  the  organism,  and 
which  should  therefore  by  rights  have  stimulated 
to  a  profounder  study  of  the  nature  of  purpose, 
should  de  facto  have  at  first  emphasized  the 
tendency  to  proscribe  the  idea  of  conscious  purpose 
as  wholly  '  unscientific.'*  Because  the  purposive- 
ness  which  is  manifest  in  bodily  structure  and  in 
admittedly  unconscious  behaviour  need  not  by  the 
man  of  science  be  referred  to  the  conscious  agency 
of  an  external  deity,  the  road  seemed  open  for  a 
denial  that  conscious  efficacy  is  to  be  found  any- 
where. Whereas,  before  Darwin,  '  unconscious 
purpose '  seemed  self- contradictory  ;  after  Darwin 
it  seemed,  on  the  one  hand,  interpretable  as  meaning 
*  This  docs  not  apply  to  Darwin  himself. 


12  WILLIAM  JAMES 

simply  progressive  adaptation,  and  on  the  other  to 
be  the  only  kind  of  purpose  that  science  could 
ultimately  admit.  And  yet  such  a  view  runs  pro- 
foundly counter  to  the  moving  spirit  of  Darwinism. 
For  in  this  view  consciousness  is  functionless,  and 
therefore  biologically  meaningless.  Nor  can  it,  by 
way  of  philosophical  compensation,  be  regarded  as 
the  vehicle  of  '  disinterested  knowledge  ' ;  it  must 
be  regarded  rather  as  the  vehicle  of  gratuitous  self- 
deception,  seeing  that  in  practice  it  is  impossible 
for  us  to  divest  ourselves  of  the  conviction  that  our 
deliberations  and  personal  plans  really  make  some 
difference  in  the  world  of  nature. 

It  was  left  to  James  to  discover  that  there  is 
nothing  to  be  gained  either  scientifically,  philo- 
sophically, aesthetically,  or  practically,  by  this 
grand  epistemological  postulate  of  the  fundamental 
and  thorough-going  uselessness  of  all  knowledge. 
And  he  began  by  discovering  that  the  automaton- 
theory  (which  had  at  first  captivated  his  own 
imagination),  though  professing  to  be  strictly 
scientific,  was  put  forward  "  on  purely  a  priori  and 
(jMasi-metaphysical  grounds."  In  a  footnote  of 
great  biographical  interest  he  tells  us  that  "  the 
present  writer  recalls  how,  in  1869,  when  still  a 
medical  student,  he  began  to  write  an  essay  show- 
ing  how  almost   everyone  who   speculated   about 


FUNCTION  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS         13 

brain-processes  illicitly  interpolated  into  his  account 
of  them  links  derived  from  the  entirely  hetero- 
geneous universe  of  Feeling.  .  .  .  The  writing  was 
soon  stopped,  because  he  perceived  that  the  view 
which  he  was  upholding  against  these  authors  was 
a  pure  conception,  with  no  proofs  to  be  adduced  of 
its  reality.  Later  it  seemed  to  him  that  whatever 
proofs  existed  really  told  in  favour  of  their  view."* 
Elsewhere  he  says :  "In  view  of  the  strange 
arrogance  with  which  the  wildest  materialistic 
speculations  persist  in  calling  themselves  '  science,' 
it  is  well  to  recall  just  what  the  reasoning  is,  by 
which  the  effect-theory  of  attention  is  confirmed. 
It  is  an  argument  from  analogy,  drawn  from  rivers, 
reflex  actions,  and  other  material  phenomena  where 
no  consciousness  appears  to  exist  at  all,  and 
extended  to  cases  where  consciousness  seems  the 
phenomenon's  essential  feature.  The  consciousness 
doesn't  count,  these  reasoners  say ;  it  doesn't  exist 
for  science,  it  is  nil ;  you  mustn't  think  about  it  at 
all.  The  intensely  reckless  character  of  all  this 
needs  no  comment.  It  is  making  the  mechanical 
theory  true  per  fas  aut  nefas.     For  the  sake  of  that 

*  Principles  of  Psychology,  vol.  i.,  p.  130  n.  It  is  in- 
structive that  when  James  had  satisfied  himself  that  the 
mechanical  theory  was  unsupported  by  concrete  fact,  he  took 
no  interest  in  proving  the  writers  he  mentions  to  have  been 
inconsistent. 


14  WILLIAM  JAMES 

theory  we  make  inductions  from  phenomena  to 
others  that  are  startlingly  unlike ;  and  we  assume 
that  a  complication  which  Nature  has  introduced 
(the  presence  of  feeling  and  of  effort,  namely)  is 
not  worthy  of  scientific  recognition  at  all.  Such 
conduct  may  conceivably  be  wise,  though  I  doubt 
it ;  but  scientific,  as  contrasted  with  metaphysical, 
it  cannot  seriously  be  called."  * 

As  regards  the  "positive  reasons  why  we  ought 
to  continue  to  talk  in  psychology  as  if  conscious- 
ness had  causal  efficacy,"  James  points  outj  that 
"  the  particulars  of  the  distribution  of  conscious- 
ness point  to  its  being  efficacious " ;  that  "  con- 
sciousness grows  the  more  complex  and  intense  the 
higher  we  rise  in  the  animal  kingdom.  From  this 
point  of  view  it  seems  an  organ,  superadded  to  the 
other  organs,  which  maintain  the  animal  in  the 
struggle  for  existence ;  and  the  presumption,  of 
course,  is  that  it  helps  him  in  some  way  in  the 
struggle  just  as  they  do."  He  proceeds  to  show  in 
what  way  consciousness  may  be  of  bodily  use,  in 
view  of  the  defects  which  make  the  nervous  system 
"  need  just  the  kind  of  help  that  consciousness 
would  bring  provided  it  were  efficacious." 

*  Op.  cit,  vol.  i.,  p.  454. 

+  Op.  cit.,  vol.  i.,  p.  138  /.      (The  quotations  have    been 
slightly  abridged.) 


FUNCTION  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS         15 

"The  study,"  he  says,  "of  the  phenomena  of 
consciousness  which  we  shall  make  throughout  the 
rest  of  this  book  will  show  us  that  consciousness  is 
at  all  times  a  selecting  agency.     The  item  empha- 
sized   is   always   in    close    connection    with    some 
interest  felt  by  consciousness  to  be  paramount  at 
the  time.     The  dilemma  in  regard  to  the  nervous 
system  seems  to  be  of  the  following  kind.    We  may 
construct    one    which    will    react    infallibly    and 
certainly,  but  it  will  then  be  capable  of  reacting  to 
very  few  changes  in  the  environment — it  will  fail 
to  be  adapted  to  all  the  rest.     We  may,  on  the 
other  hand,  construct  a  nervous  system  potentially 
adapted  to  respond  to  an  infinite  variety  of  minute 
features  in  the  situation  ;    but  its  fallibility  will 
then  be  as  great  as  its  elaboration.     We  can  never 
be  sure  that  its  equilibrium  will  be  upset  in  the 
appropriate  direction.     All  this  is  said  of  the  brain 
as  a  physical  machine  pure  and  simple.     Can  con- 
sciousness  increase   its   efficiency   by   loading    its 
dice  ?     Such  is  the  problem. 

"  Loading  its  dice  would  mean  bringing  a  more 
or  less  constant  pressure  to  bear  in  favour  of  those 
of  its  performances  which  make  for  the  most 
permanent  interests  of  the  brain's  owner  ;  it  would 
mean  a  constant  inhibition  of  the  tendencies  to 
stray  aside. 


16  WILLIAM  JAMES 

"  Well,  just  such  pressure  and  such  inhibition 
are  what  consciousness  seems  to  be  exerting  all  the 
while.     And  the  interests  in  whose  favour  it  seems 
to    exert  them    are   its  interests,  and  its  alone — 
interests   which  it   creates,  and  which,  but  for  it, 
would  have  no  status  in  the  realm  of  being  what- 
ever.   We  talk,  it  is  true,  when  we  are  Darwinizing, 
as   if   the   mere   body   that   owns   the    brain    had 
interests ;  we  speak  about  the  utilities  of  its  various 
organs,  and  how  they  help  or  hinder  the  body's 
survival ;  and  we  treat  the  survival  as  if  it  were  an 
absolute    end,   existing   as   such   in   the   physical 
world,  a  sort  of  actual  should-be,  presiding  over  the 
animal  and  judging  his  reactions,  quite  apart  from 
the  presence  of  any  commenting  intelligence  out- 
side.    We  forget  that  in  the  absence  of  some  such 
superadded,  commenting   intelligence   (whether  it 
be   that  of   the    animal    itself,   or   only   ours    or 
Mr.    Darwin's)    the  reactions   cannot   be   properly 
talked  of  as  '  useful '  or    '  hurtful '   at   all.     Con- 
sidered  merely  physically,  all  that  can  be  said  of 
them  is  that  if  they  occur  in  a  certain  way  survival 
will,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  prove  to  be  their  incidental 
consequence.     In  a  word,  survival  can  enter  into  a 
purely  physiological  discussion  only  as  an  hypothesis 
made  by  an  onlooker  about  the  future.     But  the 
moment  you  bring  a  consciousness  into  the  midst, 


FUNCTION  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS         17 

survival  ceases  to  be  a  mere  hypothesis.  No  longer 
is  it,  '  if  survival  is  to  occur,  then  so  and  so  must 
brain  and  other  organs  work.'  It  has  now  become 
an  imperative  decree :  '  Survival  shall  occur,  and 
therefore  organs  must  so  work !'  Real  ends  appear 
for  the  first  time  now  upon  the  world's  stage.  The 
conception  of  consciousness  as  a  purely  cognitive 
form  of  being,  which  is  the  pet  way  of  regarding  it 
in  many  idealistic  schools,  modern  as  well  as 
ancient,  is  thoroughly  anti-psychological,  as  the 
remainder  of  this  book  will  show.  Every  actually 
existing  consciousness  seems  to  itself,  at  any  rate,  to 
be  a  fighter  for  ends,  of  which  many,  but  for  its 
presence,  would  not  be  ends  at  all.  Its  powers  of 
cognition  are  mainly  subservient  to  these  ends,  dis- 
cerning which  facts  further  them  and  which  do  not. 
"  Now  let  consciousness  only  be  what  it  seems  to 
itself,  and  it  will  help  an  unstable  brain  to  com- 
pass its  proper  ends.  The  movements  of  the  brain 
per  se  yield  the  means  of  attaining  these  ends 
mechanically,  but  only  out  of  a  lot  of  other  ends, 
if  so  they  may  be  called,  which  are  not  the  proper 
ends  of  the  animal,  but  often  quite  opposed.  The 
brain  is  an  instrument  of  possibilities,  but  of 
no  certainties.  But  the  consciousness,  with  its 
own  ends  present  to  it,  and  knowing  also  well 
which  possibilities  lead  thereto  and  which  away, 

2 


18  WILLIAM  JAMES 

will,  if  endowed  with  causal  efficacy,  reinforce  the 
favourable  possibilities  and  repress  the  unfavour- 
able or  indifferent  ones. 

"  Thus,  then,  from  every  point  of  view,  the  circum- 
stantial evidence  against  that  theory  [of  automatism] 
is  strong.  A  priori  analysis  of  both  brain-action 
and  conscious  action  show  us  that  if  the  latter  were 
efficacious,  it  would,  by  its  selective  emphasis,  make 
amends  for  the  indeterminatencss  of  the  former ; 
whilst  the  study  a  posteriori  of  the  distribution  of 
consciousness  shows  it  to  be  exactly  such  as  we 
might  expect  in  an  organ  added  for  the  sake  of 
steering  a  nervous  system  grown  too  complex  to 
regulate  itself.  The  conclusion  that  it  is  useful  is, 
after  this,  quite  justifiable." 

In  a  section  specially  devoted  to  the  subject  of 
Selection,  James  further  points  out  that  conscious- 
ness "  is  always  interested  more  in  one  part  of  its 
object  than  in  another,  and  welcomes  and  rejects, 
or  chooses,  all  the  while  it  thinks.  To  begin  at  the 
bottom,  what  are  our  very  senses  themselves  but 
organs  of  selection  ?  Out  of  what  is  in  itself  an 
undistinguishable,  swarming  continuum,  devoid  of 
distinction  or  emphasis,  our  senses  make  for  us,  by 
attending  to  this  motion  and  ignoring  that,  a  world 
full  of  contrasts,  of  sharp  accents,  of  abrupt 
changes,  of  picturesque  light  and  shade. 


FUNCTION  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS         19 

"  Helmholtz  says  that  we  notice  only  those 
sensations  which  are  signs  to  us  of  things.  But 
what  are  things  ?  Nothing  but  special  groups  of 
sensible  qualities  which  happen  practically  or 
aesthetically  to  interest  us,  to  which  we  therefore 
give  substantive  names,  and  which  we  exalt  to  this 
exclusive  status  of  independence  and  dignity.  But 
in  itself,  apart  from  my  interest,  a  particular  dust- 
wreath  on  a  windy  day  is  just  as  much  of  an 
individual  thing,  and  just  as  much  or  as  little 
deserves  an  individual  name,  as  my  own  body 
does. 

"And  then,  among  the  sensations  we  get  from 
each  separate  thing,  what  happens?  The  mind 
selects  again.  It  chooses  certain  of  the  sensations 
to  represent  the  thing  most  truly,  and  considers 
the  rest  as  its  appearances,  modified  by  the  con- 
ditions of  the  moment.  Thus  perception  involves 
a  twofold  choice.  Out  of  all  present  sensations 
we  notice  mainly  such  as  are  significant  of  absent 
ones ;  and  out  of  all  the  absent  associates  which 
these  suggest  we  again  pick  out  a  very  few  to  stand 
for  the  objective  reality  par  excellence.  We  could 
have  no  more  exquisite  example  of  selective 
industry. 

"  That  industry  goes  on  to  deal  with  the  things 
thus    given    in    perception.     A    man's    empirical 


20  WILLIAM  JAMES 

thought  depends  on  the  things  he  has  experienced, 
but  what  these  shall  be  is  to  a  large  extent  deter- 
mined by  his  habits  of  attention.  .  .  . 

"  If,  now,  we  ask  how  the  mind  proceeds 
rationally  to  connect  them  [i.e.,  objects],  we  find 
selection  again  to  be  omnipotent.  All  reasoning 
depends  on  the  ability  of  the  mind  to  break  up  the 
totality  of  the  phenomenon  reasoned  about  into 
parts,  and  to  pick  out  from  among  these  the 
particular  one  which,  in  our  given  emergency,  may 
lead  to  the  proper  conclusion.  The  man  of  genius 
is  he  who  will  always  stick  in  his  bill  at  the  right 
point,  and  bring  it  out  with  the  right  element — 
'  reason  '  if  the  emergency  be  theoretical,  '  means  ' 
if  it  be  practical — transfixed  upon  it. 

"If,  now,  we  pass  to  its  aesthetic  department,  our 
law  is  still  more  obvious.  Any  natural  subject  will 
do  if  the  artist  has  wit  enough  to  pounce  upon 
some  one  feature  of  it  as  characteristic,  and  sup- 
press all  merely  accidental  items  which  do  not 
harmonize  with  this. 

"  Ascending  still  higher,  we  reach  the  plane  of 
Ethics,  where  choice  reigns  notoriously  supreme. 
An  act  has  no  ethical  quality  whatever,  unless  it 
be  chosen  out  of  several  all  equally  possible.  The 
ethical  [energy  par ^excellence  has  to  go  farther 
and  choose  which  interest  out  of  several,  equally 


FUNCTION  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS         21 

coercive,  shall  become  supreme.  The  problem 
with  the  man  is  less  what  act  he  shall  now  choose 
to  do  than  what  being  he  shall  now  resolve  to 
become. 

"  Looking  back,  then,  over  this  review,  we  see 
that  the  mind  is  at  every  stage  a  theatre  of 
simultaneous  possibilities.  Consciousness  consists 
in  the  comparison  of  these  with  each  other,  the 
selection  of  some,  and  the  suppression  of  the  rest 
by  the  reinforcing  and  inhibiting  agency  of  atten- 
tion. The  mind,  in  short,  works  on  the  data  it 
receives  very  much  as  a  sculptor  works  on  his 
block  of  stone.  In  a  sense  the  statue  stood  there 
from  eternity.  But  there  were  a  thousand  different 
ones  beside  it,  and  the  sculptor  alone  is  to  thank 
for  having  extricated  this  one  from  the  rest.  Just 
so  the  world  of  each  of  us,  howsoever  different  our 
several  views  of  it  may  be,  all  lay  embedded  in  the 
primordial  chaos  of  sensations  which  gave  the 
mere  matter  to  the  thought  of  all  of  us  indifferently. 
We  may,  if  we  like,  by  our  reasonings  unwind 
things  back  to  that  black  and  jointless  continuity 
of  space  and  moving  clouds  of  swarming  atoms 
which  science  calls  the  only  real  world.  But  all 
the  while  the  world  we  feel  and  live  in  will  be  that 
which  our  ancestors  and  we,  by  slowly  cumulative 
strokes  of  choice,  have  extricated  out  of  this,  like 


22  WILLIAM  JAMES 

sculptors,  by  simply  rejecting  certain  portions  of 
the  given  stuff.  My  world  is  but  one  in  a  million 
alike  embedded,  alike  real  to  those  who  may 
abstract  them.  How  different  must  be  the  worlds 
in  the  consciousness  of  ant,  cuttle-fish,  or  crab!"* 
The  following,  then,  are  the  salient  points  in 
James's  theory  of  the  relation  between  conscious- 
ness and  life.  It  is  a  theory  which  does  not  reduce 
psychology  to  biology,  but,  on  the  contrary,  shows 
the  necessity  of  expanding  the  conception  of  life 
to  include  consciousness. 

1.  By  directly  connecting  cognition  with  action, 
James  vindicates  its  biological  utility,  as  against 
the  adherents  of  the  '  automaton-theory.'  Cog- 
nition ceases  to  be  biologically  meaningless. 

2.  By  showing  that  cognition  and  volition  are 
interpenetrative,  he  finally  supplants  the  old 
faculty-psychology,  which  '  explained '  the  mind 
as  a  congeries  of  independent  '  powers.'  Mind 
becomes  an  organic  unity  of  function. 

8.  His  explanation  of  the  biological  function  of 
cognition  flows  from  an  entirely  novel  theory  of 
its  psychological  nature.  Knowledge  is  instru- 
mental just  because  it  does  not  passively  '  repro- 
duce '  a  pre-existent  scheme,  but  presents  us  with 
alternative  possibilities,  from  which  we  select  in 

*  Op.  cit.,  vol.  i.,  pp.  284-289  (abridged). 


FUNCTION  OF  CONSCIOUSNESS         23 

accordance    with    our   personal   interests.      Mind 
becomes  an  instrument  of  choice. 

4.  Though  consciousness  exists  in  the  first  place 
for  the  satisfaction  of  bodily  needs,  it  can  minister 
to  these  only  in  so  far  as  they  are  consciously 
felt  wants.  Hence  its  emergence  entails  a  new  kind 
of  vital  need,  namely,  the  need  of  conscious  satis- 
faction, which,  again,  is  the  only  need  that  is  such 
in  any  but  a  metaphorical  sense.  Consciousness  as 
a  vital  factor  thus  raises  life  to  a  higlier  denomina- 
tion than  that  of  merely  physical  life. 

5.  Since  the  environment  to  which  an  organism 
consciously  reacts  is  the  environment  as  it  exists 
for  that  organism's  consciousness,  and  since  the 
environment  as  so  viewed  is  the  product  of 
selective  elimination  on  the  part  of  the  conscious- 
ness concerned,  it  follows  that  conscious  selection 
creates  the  known  world  in  precisely  the  same  sense 
in  which  '  natural  selection '  creates  the  species. 
"  Each  of  us  literally  chooses,  by  his  ways  of 
attending  to  things,  what  sort  of  a  universe  he 
shall  appear  to  himself  to  inhabit "  (vol.  i.,  p.  424). 

To  sum  up  so  far  :  Darwinism  without  material- 
ism is  the  keynote  of  James's  psychology.  Con- 
sciousness is  the  realm  of  real  ends,  and  in  the 
making  and  fulfilment  of  these  ends  it  contributes 
to  the  making  of  reality.     Mind's  destiny  is  not 


24  WILLIAM  JAMES 

to  be  a  '  disinterested '  spectator  of  ready-made 
existence,  but  to  be  an  active  participant  in  the 
shaping  of  the  future.  For  the  '  sensationalism  ' 
of  the  older  psychologists,  which  is  the  expression 
in  psychology  of  the  intellectualist  bias,  James  sub- 
stitutes what,  to  mark  the  contrast,  may  be  desig- 
nated as  a  '  voluntarism.'  But  this  does  not 
mean  that  he  replaces  an  independent  '  faculty '  of 
thought  or  sensation  by  an  equally  independent 
1  faculty '  of  will.  It  means  that  '  disinterested 
knowledge '  is  biologically  a  monstrosity,  compar- 
able not  so  much  to  the  winged  Pegasus  as  to  a 
molluscous  vertebrate. 


CHAPTER  III 

HABIT 

In  the  last  chapter  we  saw  that  James's  innovations 
in  psychology  dissent  from  the  general  trend  of 
scientific  thought  in  his  time  as  to  the  function  of 
consciousness.  But  his  dissent  was  prompted  by 
his  profounder  appreciation  of  the  scientific  value  of 
Darwinism.  He  saw  that  Darwinism,  instead  of 
enthroning  mechanism  as  a  universal  principle,  in 
reality  demanded  a  remodelling  of  the  fashionable 
mechanical  interpretation  of  consciousness.  He 
saw  that  if  we  are  to  embrace  consciousness  in  the 
evolutionary  scheme,  we  must  give  up  the  idea  that 
knowledge  must  be  useless.  He  faced  the  dilemma — 
either  the  Darwinian  principle  is  inapplicable  to 
animal  and  human  consciousness,  or  that  conscious- 
ness must  be  an  originative  factor  in  the  world ; 
and  he  boldly  chose  the  latter  alternative.  But  to 
adopt  this  alternative  is  finally  to  discard  the  pre- 
Darwinian  implications  of  the  word  '  evolution '  as 
the  opposite  of  '  epigenesis  ' — i.e.,  as  a  denial  of  the 
possibility  of  real  novelty.     For  James,  the  intro- 

25 


26  WILLIAM  JAMES 

duction  of  real  novelty  is  the  essential  function  of 
consciousness,*  and  to  get  it  he  shrank  as  little 
from  recognizing  the  reality  of  '  chance '  as  Darwin 
did  from  postulating  '  accidental  variations.' 

The  most  important  distinction,  it  follows,  in 
animal  behaviour  is  that  between  repetition  and 
the  original  solution  of  practical  problems.  Never- 
theless, habit  is  obviously  of  enormous  importance 
to  animal  welfare,  and  this  seems  to  bring  us  back 
to  purely  physical  laws.  "The  laws  of  Nature  are 
nothing  but  the  immutable  habits  which  the 
different  elementary  sorts  of  matter  follow  in  their 
actions  and  reactions  upon  each  other."  t  The 
difference  is  that,  while  inanimate  nature  and 
unconscious  organisms  (if  such  there  really  are) 
simply  have  habits,  conscious  beings  are  enabled  to 
form  new  habits  in  their  individual  lifetime.  More- 
over, the  more  thoroughly  alive  a  creature  is,  the 
less  rigid  are  its  '  habits.'  Both  habit-making 
and  habit-breaking  are  contrasted  with  the 
mechanical  happenings  of  inanimate  nature. 

We  are  creatures  of  habit,  not  merely  because 
habits  are,  or  should  be,  useful,  but  also  because 
"  habit  diminishes  the  conscious  attention  with 
which  our  acts  are  performed,"  and  thus  sets 
consciousness  free  for  further  conquests,  whether  in 

*  Cf.  infra,  p.  65/.  t  Principles,  vol.  i.,  p.  104. 


HABIT  27 

the  direction  of  forming  more  habits,  or  of  coping 
with  situations  too  intricate  for  habit's  office.* 
The  more  habitual  an  action  grows,  the  more 
ingrained  it  becomes  in  the  nervous  system ;  con- 
sciousness is  ever,  so  to  speak,  delegating  to 
subordinates  (which  it  has  itself  trained)  whatever 
matters  can  be  dealt  with  in  a  routine  way.  In  his 
chapter  on  Habit,  however,  James  deals  not  only 
with  this  thought-economizing  capacity  of  habit, 
but  also  with  the  biological  and  ethical  need  for 
the  formation  of  good  habits  rather  than  bad  ;  for 
the  semi-automatic  character  of  habit  does  not 
automatically  insure  that  the  habitual  action  shall 
be  good,  either  for  the  individual  or  for  society. 

It  is  highly  characteristic  of  James  that  he  makes 
no  apology  for  the  "  very  natural  transition  to  the 
ethical  implications  of  the  law  of  habit." t  It  seems 
to  him  as  natural  to  study  the  '  laws  of  mind  ' 
with  a  view  to  self-control,  as  it  is  to  study  the 
'  laws  of  nature '  with  a  view  to  controlling 
physical  forces.  More  so,  indeed,  for  self-control 
is  at  the  root  of  all  active  control  whatsoever.  For 
James,  therefore,  psychology  is  not  a  blank  gazing 
at  the  '  inexorable  '  flow  of  mental  events ;  it  is  a 
means  for  perfecting  the  purposes  of  which  our 
conscious  life  is  compact;  it  is  itself  an  integral 
*  Op.  cit.,  vol.  i.,  p.  113  f.  \  Op.  cit.,  vol.  i.,  p.  120. 


28  WILLIAM  JAMES 

part  of  our  purposeful  thinking  activity.  This 
attitude  is  made  possible  for  him  by  the  fact  that 
he  abstains  from  assuming  that  in  order  to  under- 
stand purpose  we  must  treat  it  as  a  delusion.  If 
there  is  one  thing  more  than  another  that  explains 
the  genesis  of  James's  philosophy,  it  is  this.  This 
rare  and  refreshing  attitude,  and  veritable  stroke 
of  genius,  emancipates  psychology  from  theDry-as- 
dusts  who  can  see  no  connection  between  the 
problems  of  psychology  and  of  real  living.  Its  full 
significance  will  appear  in  the  sequel,*  but  mean- 
while we  may  quote  the  following  : 

"  If  the  period  between  twenty  and  thirty  is  the 
critical  one  in  the  formation  of  intellectual  and 
professional  habits,  the  period  below  twenty  is 
more  important  still  for  the  fixing  of  personal 
habits,  properly  so  called,  such  as  vocalization  and 
pronunciation,  gesture,  motion,  and  address.  Hardly 
ever  is  a  language  learned  after  twenty  spoken 
without  a  foreign  accent ;  hardly  ever  can  a  youth 
transferred  to  the  society  of  his  betters  unlearn  the 
nasality  and  other  vices  of  speech  bred  in  him  by 
the  associations  of  his  growing  years.  Hardly 
ever,  indeed,  no  matter  how  much  money  there  be  in 
his  pocket,  can  he  even  learn  to  dress  like  a  gentle- 
man born.  The  merchants  offer  their  wares  as 
*  See  especially  p.  57/.,  and  chap.  ix. 


HABIT  29 

eagerly  to  him  as  to  the  veriest  '  swell,'  but  he 
simply  cannot  buy  the  right  things.  An  invisible 
law,  as  strong  as  gravitation,  keeps  him  within  his 
orbit,  arrayed  this  year  as  he  was  the  last ;  and 
how  his  better-bred  acquaintances  contrive  to  get 
the  things  they  wear  will  be  for  him  a  mystery  till 
his  dying  day. 

"  The  great  thing,  then,  in  all  education,  is  to 
make  our  nervous  system  our  ally  instead  of  our 
enemy.  It  is  to  fund  and  capitalize  our  acquisitions 
and  live  at  ease  upon  the  interest  of  the  fund.  For 
this  we  must  make  automatic  and  habitual,  as  early 
as  possible,  as  many  useful  actions  as  we  can,  and 
guard  against  the  growing  into  ways  that  are  likely 
to  be  disadvantageous  to  us,  as  we  should  guard 
against  the  plague.  The  more  of  the  details  of  our 
daily  life  we  can  hand  over  to  the  effortless  custody 
of  automatism,  the  more  our  higher  powers  of  mind 
will  be  set  free  for  their  proper  work.  There  is  no 
more  miserable  human  being  than  one  in  whom 
nothing  is  habitual  but  indecision,  and  for  whom 
the  lighting  of  every  cigar,  the  drinking  of  every 
cup,  the  time  of  rising  and  going  to  bed  every  day, 
and  the  beginning  of  every  bit  of  work,  are  subjects 
of  express  volitional  deliberation.  Full  half  the 
time  of  such  a  man"  goes  to  the  deciding  or 
regretting  of  matters  which  ought  to  be  so  ingrained 


80  WILLIAM  JAMES 

in  him  as  practically  not  to  exist  for  his  conscious- 
ness at  all.  If  there  be  such  daily  duties  not  yet 
ingrained  in  any  one  of  my  readers,  let  him  begin 
this  very  hour  to  set  the  matter  right."* 

"  A  third  maxim  may  be  added  to  the  preceding 
pair:!  Seize  the  very  first  possible  opportunity  to 
act  on  every  resolution  you  make,  and  on  every 
emotional  prompting  you  may  experience  in  the 
direction  of  the  habits  you  aspire  to  gain.  It  is 
not  in  the  moment  of  their  forming,  but  in  the 
moment  of  their  producing  motor  effects  that 
resolves  and  aspirations  communicate  the  new 
'  set '  to  the  brain.  ...  A  tendency  to  act  only 
becomes  effectively  ingrained  in  us  in  proportion  to 
the  uninterrupted  frequency  with  which  the  actions 
actually  occur,  and  the  brain  '  grows '  to  their  use. 
Every  time  a  resolve  or  a  fine  glow  of  feeling 
evaporates  without  bearing  practical  fruit  is  worse 
than  a  chance  lost ;  it  works  so  as  positively  to 
hinder  future  resolutions  and  emotions  from  taking 
the  normal  path  of  discharge.  There  is  no  more 
contemptible  type  of  human  character  than  that  of 
the    nerveless    sentimentalist  and   dreamer,   who 

*  Op.  cit.,  vol.  i.,  p.  121/. 

+  The  others  are:  (1)  "We  must  take  care  to  launch  our- 
selves with  as  strong  and  decided  an  initiative  as  possible." 
(2)  "  Never  suffer  an  exception  to  occur  till  the  new  habit  is 
S3curely  rooted  in  your  'ife." 


HABIT  31 

spends  his  life  in  a  weltering  sea  of  sensibility  and 
emotion,  but  who  never  does  a  manly  concrete 
deed."* 

One  hardly  knows  whether  to  admire  more  the 
moral  or  the  psychological  insight  of  passages  like 
this. 

*  Principles,  vol.  i.,  p.  124  f. 


CHAPTER  IV 

PEKSONALITY   AND    CONTINUITY 

In  passing  to  the  "  study  of  the  mind  from  within," 
in  chapter  ix.  of  the  Principles,  James  notes  the 
following  as  fundamental  characters  in  the  thought- 
process  : 

1.  "  Every  thought  tends  to  be  part  of  a  personal 
consciousness. 

2.  "  Within  each  personal  consciousness  thought 
is  always  changing. 

3.  "Within  each  personal  consciousness  thought 
is  sensibly  continuous. 

4.  "  It  always  appears  to  deal  with  objects  inde- 
pendent of  itself. 

5.  "  It  is  interested  in  some  parts  of  these 
objects  to  the  exclusion  of  others,  and  welcomes 
or  rejects — chooses  from  among  them,  in  a  word — 
all  the  while."* 

With  the  last  of  these  we  have  already  dealt  in 
Chapter  II.    This  chapter  we  must  devote  to  the  first 

*  Principles,  vol.  i.,  p.  225. 
32 


PERSONALITY  AND  CONTINUITY       83 

three,  which  are  most  intimately  connected.  The 
fourth  will  be  dealt  with  in  Chapters  VII.  and  VIII. 
First,  as  to  personality. 

"  The  only  states  of  consciousness  that  we 
naturally  deal  with  are  found  in  personal  con- 
sciousnesses, minds,  selves,  concrete  particular  I's 
and  you's.  Each  of  these  minds  keeps  its  own 
thoughts  to  itself.  There  is  no  giving  or  bartering 
between  them.  No  thought  even  comes  into  direct 
sight  of  a  thought  in  another  personal  conscious- 
ness than  its  own.  Absolute  insulation,  irreducible 
pluralism,  is  the  law.  It  seems  as  if  the  elementary 
psychic  fact  were  not  thought  or  this  thought  or 
that  thought,  but  my  thought,  every  thought  being 
owned.  .  .  .  The  breaches  between  such  thoughts 
[belonging  to  different  personal  minds]  are  the  most 
absolute  breaches  in  nature.  .  .  .*  The  universal 
conscious  fact  is  not  '  feelings  and  thoughts  exist,' 
but  '  I  think '  and  '  I  feel.'  No  psychology,  at  any 
rate,  can  question  the  existence  of  personal  selves. 
The  worst  a  psychology  can  do  is  so  to  interpret 
the  nature  of  these  selves  as  to  rob  them  of  their 
worth.     A  French  writer,  speaking  of   our  ideas, 

*  Later  (1909),  James  was  inclined  to  modify  this  extreme 
view,  chiefly,  it  would  seem,  as  the  result  of  his  experiences 
as  a  '  psychical  researcher.'  See  Memories  and  Studies, 
pp.  201-206;  and  cf.  Principles,  vol.  i.,  p.  367. 

8 


34  WILLIAM  JAMES 

says  somewhere,  in  a  fit  of  anti-spiritualistic  excite- 
ment, that,  misled  by  certain  peculiarities  which 
they  display,  we  '  end  by  personifying '  the  pro- 
cession which  they  make,  such  personification 
being  regarded  by  him  as  a  great  philosophic 
blunder  on  our  part.  It  could  only  be  a  blunder 
if  the  notion  of  personality  meant  something 
essentially  different  from  anything  to  be  found  in 
the  mental  procession.  But  if  that  procession  be 
itself  the  very  'original '  of  the  notion  of  personality, 
to  personify  it  cannot  possibly  be  wrong.  It  is 
already  personified.  There  are  no  marks  of  per- 
sonality to  be  gathered  aliunde,  and  then  found 
lacking  in  the  train  of  thought.  It  has  them 
already,  so  that  to  whatever  further  analysis  we 
may  subject  that  form  of  personal  self-hood  under 
which  thoughts  appear,  it  is,  and  must  remain, 
true  that  the  thoughts  which  psychology  studies 
do  continually  tend  to  appear  as  parts  of  personal 
selves."* 

The  subjects  of  continuity  and  change  in  con- 
sciousness may  be  taken  together,  for  it  is  con- 
tinuity of  change,  or  consciousness  as  a  moving 
continuum,  that  James  is  most  solicitous  about. 
This  feature  of  consciousness,  which  James  was 
*  Principles,  vol.  i.,  p.  226/. 


PERSONALITY  AND  CONTINUITY       35 

the  first  to  urge,  is  sublimated  into  a  metaphysical 
idea  of  the  first  rank  in  the  philosophy  of  Bergson.* 
James's  vindication  of  conscious  continuity  rendered 
obsolete  all  previous  abstract  discussion  of  the 
relation  of  thought  to  time,  though  professed 
philosophers  are  only  beginning  to  perceive  this. 
Presumably,  therefore,  its  importance  is  not  easy 
to  make  clear.  James  himself  subsequently  sum- 
marized his  view  as  follows  : 

"  The  conjunctive  relation  that  has  given  most 
trouble  to  philosophers  is  the  co-conscious  transition, 
so  to  call  it,  by  which  one  experience  passes  into 
another  when  both  belong  to  the  same  self.  About 
the  facts  there  is  no  question.  My  experiences  and 
your  experiences  are  '  with '  each  other  in  various 
external  ways,  but  mine  pass  into  mine,  and  yours 
pass  into  yours,  in  a  way  in  which  yours  and  mine 
never  pass  into  one  another.  Within  each  of  our 
personal  histories,  subject,  object,  interest,  and 
purpose,  are  continuous,  or  may  be  continuous. 
Personal  histories  are  processes  of  change  in  time, 
and  the  change  itself  is  one  of  the  things  immediately 
experienced.  '  Change '  in  tliis  case  means  con- 
tinuous  as   opposed    to   discontinuous   transition. 

*  James's  view  first  appeared  in  an  article  "  On  Some 
Omissions  of  Introspective  Psychology "  (Mind,  January, 
1884).     Bergson's  Donnees  Immtdiates  date  from  1889. 


36  WILLIAM  JAMES 

But  continuous  transition  is  one  sort  of  a  con- 
junctive relation ;  and  to  be  a  radical  empiricist 
means  to  hold  fast  to  this  conjunctive  relation  of 
all  others,  for  this  is  the  strategic  point,  the 
position  through  which,  if  a  hole  be  made,  all  the 
corruptions  of  dialectics  and  all  the  metaphysical 
fictions  pour  into  our  philosophy.  The  holding 
fast  to  this  relation  means  taking  it  at  its  face 
value,  neither  less  nor  more ;  and  to  take  it  at  its 
face  value  means  first  of  all  to  take  it  just  as  we 
feel  it,  and  not  to  confuse  ourselves  with  abstract 
talk  about  it,  involving  words  that  drive  us  to 
invent  secondary  conceptions  in  order  to  neutralize 
their  suggestions  and  to  make  our  actual  experience 
again  seem  possible." 

We  should  note  that  James  is  here  referring  to 
Kantian  and  Anglo-Hegelian  '  explanations '  of  the 
'  possibility  of  experience,'  and  is  not  taking  con- 
tinuity in  the  highly  conceptualized  sense  which 
has  been  constructed  by  some  modern  mathema- 
ticians. 

"  What  I  do  feel  simply,  when  a  later  moment  of 
my  experience  succeeds  an  earlier  one,  is  that, 
though  they  are  two  moments,  the  transition  from 
the  one  to  the  other  is  continuous.  Continuity  here 
is  a  definite  sort  of  experience — just  as  definite  as 
is    the    discontinuity   experience   which    I    find    it 


PERSONALITY  AND  CONTINUITY       37 

impossible  to  avoid  when  I  seek  to  make  the 
transition  from  an  experience  of  my  own  to  one 
of  yours.* 

"Practically  to  experience  one's  personal  con- 
tinuum in  this  living  way  is  to  know  the  originals 
of  the  ideas  of  continuity  and  of  sameness,  to  know 
what  the  words  stand  for  concretely,  to  own  all 
that  they  can  ever  mean.  [Cf.  supra  James's 
criticism  of  the  attempt  to  depersonalize  person- 
ality.] But  all  experiences  have  their  conditions ; 
and  over-subtle  intellects,  thinking  about  the  facts 
here,  and  asking  how  they  are  possible,  have  ended 
by  substituting  a  lot  of  static  objects  of  conception  for 
the  direct  perceptual  experiences.  The  result  is  that 
from  difficulty  to  difficulty,  the  plain  conjunctive 
experience  has  been  discredited  by  both  schools, 
the  empiricist  leaving  things  permanently  disjoined, 
and  the  rationalist  remedying  the  looseness  by  their 
[his?]  absolutes  or  substances,  or  whatever  other 
fictitious  agencies  of  union  they  [he  ?]  may  have 
employed.  From  all  which  artificiality  we  can  be 
saved  by  a  couple  of  simple  reflections  :  first,  that 
conjunctions   and   separations  are,   at   all  events, 

*  Cf.  Radical  Empiricism,  p.  42  :  For  a  radical  empiricism 
"  the  relations  that  connect  experiences  must  themselves  be 
experienced  relations,  and  any  kind  of  relation  experienced 
must  be  accounted  as  '  real '  as  anything  else  in  the  system." 


38  WILLIAM  JAMES 

co-ordinate  phenomena,  which,  if  we  take  experi- 
ences at  their  face  value,  must  be  accounted  equally 
real ;  and,  second,  that  if  we  insist  on  treating 
things  as  really  separate  when  they  are  given  as 
continuously  joined,  invoking,  when  union  is 
required,  transcendental  principles  to  overcome 
the  separateness  we  have  assumed,  then  we  ought 
to  stand  ready  to  perform  the  converse  act.  We 
ought  to  invoke  higher  principles  of  disunion,  also, 
to  make  our  merely  experienced  disjunctions  more 
truly  real."* 

This  criticism,  which  remains  up  to  the  present 
unanswered,  lays  the  axe  to  the  tap-root  of 
'  transcendental  idealism.'  For  once  the  reality 
of  continuity  is  admitted,  all  need  for  assuming 
either  a  '  Soul-substance '  to  be  the  '  support,'  or 
transcendental  Ego  to  be  the  '  presupposition,'  of 
consciousness,  disappears. 

"  Our  '  Thought' — a  cognitive  phenomenal  event 
in  time — is,  if  it  exists  at  all,  itself  the  only  Thinker 
which  the  facts  require.  The  only  service  that 
transcendental  egoism  has  done  to  psychology  has 
been  by  its  protests  against  Hume's  '  bundle  '- 
theory  of  mind.  But  this  service  has  been 
ill-performed ;  for  the  Egoists  themselves,  let 
them   say  what   they  will,  believe  in  the  bundle, 

*  Essays  in  Eadical  Empiricism,  p.  47  /. 


PERSONALITY  AND  CONTINUITY       39 

and  in  their  own  system  merely  tie  it  up  with  their 
special  transcendental  string,  invented  for  that 
use  alone.  Besides,  they  talk  as  if,  with  this  mirac- 
ulous tying  or  '  relating/  the  Ego's  duties  were 
done."  Of  its  far  more  important  duty  of  choosing 
some  of  the  things  it  ties,  and  appropriating  them, 
to  the  exclusion  of  the  rest,  they  tell  us  never  a 
word.  .  .  . 

"  The  literature  of  the  Self  is  large,  but  all  its 
authors  may  be  classed  as  radical  or  mitigated 
representatives  of  the  three  schools  we  have  named 
— substantialism,  associationism,t  or  transcenden- 
talism. Our  own  opinion  must  be  classed  apart, 
although  it  incorporates  essential  elements  from  all 
three  schools.  There  need  never  have  been  a  quarrel 
between  associationism  and  its  rivals  if  the  former 
liad  admitted  the  indecomposable  unity  of  every  pulse 
of  thought  [cf.  Bergson's  "  Chaque  mouvement  est 

*  A  still  more  fatal  flaw  is  that  the  Idealists,  in  their  hurry 
to  'explain'  the  transcendental  'possibility  of  knowledge,' 
have  made  progress  in  knowledge  impossible.  See  infra, 
p.  72/. 

f  The  fundamental  thesis  of  '  associationism,'  that  the 
concrete  facts  of  mental  life  can  be  adequately  '  explained ' 
by  the  mechanical  operation  of  the  '  laws  of  association,'  is 
so  obviously  and  so  completely  annihilated  by  James's  demon- 
stration of  the  selective  function  of  consciousness,  that  I  have 
not  deemed  it  necessary  to  refer  directly  to  associationism 
at  all. 


40  WILLIAM  JAMES 

indivisible  "],  and  the  latter  been  willing  to  allow  that 
'perishing'  pnhes  of  thought  might  recollect  and 
know"* 

After  this  fashion  did  James  endeavour  to  remove 
the  metaphysical  cataract  that  had  so  long  blinded 
men  to  the  realities  of  their  immediate  experience. 

*  Principles,  vol.  i.,  p.  369  f. 


CHAPTER  V 

WILL 

In  James  the  transition  from  psychology  to  the 
larger  problems  of  philosophy  appears  to  occur  on 
the  question  of  Free  Will.  His  philosophy  avows 
itself  a  free-will  philosophy,  just  as  his  psychology 
is  voluntaristic ;  and  for  the  same  reason — viz., 
that  he  is  a  true  Darwinian,  a  champion  of  real 
novelty.*  But  James  actually  proceeds  by  raising 
the  question,  How  can  we  pass  from  the  recogni- 
tion of  the  reality  and  importance  of  Will  to  the 
belief  in  Freedom?  It  is  chiefly  because  psy- 
chology thus  conducts  directly  and  inevitably  to  the 
free-will  problem,  that  psychology  is  for  James 
something  more  than  a  mere  branch  of  '  natural 
science  ' ;  while  it  is  because  this  problem  concerns 
the  ultimate  function  of  human  consciousness 
that  philosophy  cannot  cut  loose  from  psychology. 
And  finally  it  is  because  the  attempt  to  solve  the 
free-will  problem  by  dint  of  '  pure  reason  '  begs  the 

*  Cf.  infra,  p.  65  /. 
41 


42  WILLIAM  JAMES 

question  in  the  interest  of  the  deterministic  alterna- 
tive, that  for  James  the  play  of  '  pure  reason  '  is 
literally  play,  and  inadequate  to  the  serious 
business  of  life. 

Since  the  free-will  problem  forms  one  of  the 
nodal  points  wherein  psychology  and  philosophy 
inosculate,  James  is,  in  his  Principles,  confronted 
with  an  awkward  crux  of  method.  How  is  he 
even  to  state  the  problem  in  psychological  terms, 
when  the  solution  thereof  must  take  him  far 
beyond  the  limits  of  psychology  as  a  natural 
science — the  limits  within  which  alone  psychology 
can  lead  an  autonomous  existence  ?  We  must 
appreciate  this  methodological  difficulty  if  we  are 
to  grasp  James's  position  in  the  Principles. 

Before  reaching  his  problem,  James  has  im- 
pugned the  scientific  status  of  the  automaton 
theory.*  He  has  shown  that  it  is  dogmatic  and 
metaphysical,  and  that  we  are  under  no  logical 
obligation  to  accept  it.  Now,  it  is  true  that  to 
challenge  the  credentials  of  that  theory  is  not 
enough  to  establish  the  reality  of  freedom.  In  the 
first  place,  we  may  arbitrarily  and  frankly  adopt 
automatism  as  a  metaphysical  theory  ;  and  in  the 
second  place,  we  may  reject  it  and  still  remain 
determinists.  For  it  will  still  at  least  seem  possible 
*  Cf.  chap,  ii.,  especially  p.  12  /. 


WILL  43 

to  maintain  that  within  the  universe  '  as  a  whole,' 
conceived  in  terms  of  the  rival  theory  of  Interac- 
tion— i.e.,  of  causal  reciprocity  between  psychical 
and  physical  events — not  Freedom,  but  Necessity 
obtains.*  James  himself  explicitly  allows  the  logical 
possibility  of  such  a  position. t  But  though  auto- 
matism is  not  convertible  with  determinism,  it  is 
the  only  form  in  which  determinism  can  be  sharply 
opposed  to  indeterminism,  and  it  is  the  only  form 
which  appears  even  remotely  susceptible  of  scien- 
tific proof.  Hence,  to  show  how  arbitrary  is  the 
automaton  theory,  though  we  do  not  thereby  prove 
the  truth  of  indeterminism,  does  set  us  logically 
free  to  embrace  this  alternative,  if  it  should  appeal 
to  us  on  emotional  or  practical  grounds. 

James  therefore  maintains  that  the  question 
whether  volition  or  attention  (for  "  volition  is 
nothing  but  attention")  does  or  does  not  involve 
a  "  principle  of  spiritual  activity  "  "  is  metaphysical 
as  well  as  psychological,  and  is  well  worthy  of  all 
the  pains  we  can  bestow  on  it.  It  is,  in  fact,  the 
pivotal  question  of  metaphysics,  the  very  hinge  on 
which  our  picture  of  the  world  shall  swing  from 

*  Such  a  position  is  assumed,  e.g.  (though  not  expressly 
argued),  by  Mr.  W.  McDougall  in  his  important  treatise  on 
Body  and  Mind. 

|  Principles,  vol.  i.,  pp.  448  and  451 


44  WILLIAM  JAMES 

materialism,  fatalism,  monism  [note  the  association 
of  these  nominally  different  doctrines !],  towards 
spiritualism,  freedom,  pluralism — or  else  the  other 
way."* 

"  The  whole  feeling  of  reality,  the  whole  sting 
and  excitement  of  voluntary  life,  depends  on  our 
sense  that  in  it  things  are  really  being  decided  from 
one  moment  to  another,  and  that  it  is  not  the  dull 
rattling  off  of  a  chain  that  was  forged  innumerable 
ages  ago.  This  appearance,  which  makes  life  and 
history  tingle  with  such  a  tragic  zest,  may  not  be 
an  illusion.  As  we  grant  to  the  advocate  of  the 
mechanical  theory  that  it  may  be  one,  so  he  must 
grant  to  us  that  it  may  not.  And  the  result  is 
two  conceptions  of  possibility,  face  to  face,  with  no 
facts  definitely  enough  known  to  stand  as  arbiter 
between  them.  Under  these  circumstances,  one 
can  leave  the  question  open  whilst  waiting  for 
light,  or  one  can  do  what  most  speculative  minds 
do,  that  is,  look  to  one's  general  philosophy  to 
incline  the  beam.  The  believers  in  mechanism  do 
so  without  hesitation,  and  they  ought  not  to  refuse 
a  similar  privilege  to  the  believers  in  a  spiritual 
force.  I  count  myself  among  the  latter,  but  as 
my  reasons  are  ethical,  they  are  hardly  suited  for 
introduction  into  a  psychological  work.  The  last 
*  Op.  cit.,  vol.  i.,  p.  448. 


WILL  45 

word  of  psychology  here  is  ignorance,  for  the 
'  forces '  engaged  are  certainly  too  delicate  and 
numerous  to  be  followed  in  detail."  * 

This  quotation  plainly  hints  at  what  James 
regards  as  the  real  problem.  And  later  he  repeats 
that  "the  question  of  free  will  is  insoluble  on 
strictly  psychologic  grounds,"  and  refers  us  to  an 
ethical  discourse  on  "  The  Dilemma  of  Deter- 
minism," t  permitting  himself  only  "a  few  words 
about  the  logic  of  the  question." 

"  The  most  that  any  argument  can  do  for  deter- 
minism is  to  make  it  a  clear  and  seductive  concep- 
tion, which  a  man  is  foolish  not  to  espouse  so  long 
as  he  stands  by  the  great  scientific  postulate  that 
the  world  must  be  one  unbroken  fact,  and  that 
prediction  of  all  things  without  exception  must  be 
ideally,  even  if  not  actually,  possible.  It  is  a  moral 
postulate  about  the  Universe — the  postulate  that 
what  ought  to  be  can  be,  and  that  bad  acts  cannot  be 
fated,  but  that  good  ones  must  be  possible  in  their 
place — which  would  lead  one  to  espouse  the  contrary 
view.  But  when  scientific  and  moral  postulates 
war  thus  with  each  other,  and  objective  proof  is  not 
to  be  had,  the  only  course  is  voluntary  choice,  for 
scepticism   itself,  if  systematic,  is   also  voluntary 

*  Op.  cit.,  vol.  i.,  p.  453  /. 

t  Now  included  in  The  Will  to  Believe. 


46  WILLIAM  JAMES 

choice.  If,  meanwhile,  the  will  be  undetermined, 
it  would  seem  only  fitting  that  the  belief  in  its 
indetermination  should  be  voluntarily  chosen  from 
amongst  other  possible  beliefs.  Freedom's  first 
deed  should  be  to  affirm  itself.  We  ought  never 
to  hope  for  any  other  method  of  getting  at  the 
truth  if  indeterminism  be  a  fact.  Doubt  of  this 
particular  truth  will  therefore  probably  be  open  to 
us  to  the  end  of  time,  and  the  utmost  that  a 
believer  in  free  will  can  ever  do  will  be  to  show- 
that  the  deterministic  arguments  are  not  coercive. 
That  they  are  seductive,  I  am  the  last  to  deny ; 
nor  do  I  deny  that  effort  may  be  needed  to  keep 
the  faith  in  freedom,  when  they  press  upon  it, 
upright  in  the  mind."* 

James,  then,  even  in  the  Principles,  points  to  the 
conclusion  that  there  is  not,  strictly  speaking,  any 

*  Op.  cit.,  vol.  ii.,  p.  573  /.  The  position  which  James 
here  takes  up  in  developing  the  '  logic  of  the  question '  of 
free  will  is  exactly  that  which  he  afterwards  expressed,  in 
more  generalized  form,  in  his  essay  on  Tlie  Will  to  Believe. 
If  the  numerous  critics  who  fell  foul  of  that  doctrine  had 
taken  the  trouble  to  acquaint  themselves  with  the  general 
tenor  of  James's  views  on  the  subject  of  will  as  explained  in 
his  Principles,  and  had  interpreted  the  doctrine  in  the  light 
of  this,  its  original  application,  we  might  have  been  spared 
such  curiously  inept  objections  as  that  James  gives  every 
man  full  licence  to  believe  whatever  he  likes  on  no  evidence 
at  all. 


WILL  47 

'  question  of  fact '  involved  in  the  free-will  contro- 
versy at  all.  For  the  issue  is  raised,  inter  alia,  of 
how  the  existence  of  volition  as  a  psychical  fact 
should  modify  our  conception  of  the  nature  of  '  fact ' 
in  general.  Can  'fact,'  in  the  end,  be  independent  of 
will  ?  Is  the  distinction  between  what  is  and  what 
ought  to  be  ultimately  irreducible  ?  Is  the  future, 
in  rerum  natura,  as  irrevocably  fixed  as  the  past  ? 
In  a  word,  can  we,  without  begging  the  question  as  to 
the  ultimate  nature  of  reality,  absolutely  separate  the 
realms  of  Logic  and  Ethics?  No  less  than  this  is 
involved  in  the  free-will  question  ;  and  James  is 
clearly  aware  of  it.  The  free-will  problem  he  saw, 
as  none  had  seen  before  him,  brings  all  the  philo- 
sophical disciplines  to  a  focus,  and  cannot,  there- 
fore, be  reduced  to  a  mere  question  of  psychological 
1  fact,'  any  more  than  it  can  be  dismissed  as 
merely  metaphysical.  And  his  distinction  between 
'  logically  coercive  '  proof  and  the  moral  right  to 
believe  will  eventually  lead  to  a  thorough  revision 
of  the  notion  of  '  logical  coerciveness  '  itself.* 

Consequently,  in  apparently  seeking  to  give  a 
psychological  formulation  of  the  problem,   James 

*  James  might  also  have  pointed  out  that  since  deter- 
minism, equally  with  indeterminism,  can  only  be  embraced 
through  an  arbitrary  act  of  choice,  it  is  afflicted  with  an 
internal  incoherence,  from  which  the  rival  theory  is  for- 
tunately free 


48  WILLIAM  JAMES 

must  not  be  understood  as  attempting  to  reduce 
the  problem  to  purely  psychological  terms.  He  is 
merely  trying  to  discover  how  far  it  falls  within  the 
limits  of  psychology  as  a  'natural  science' — i.e., 
as  a  science  dealing  with  '  facts,'  and  taking  its 
conception  of  '  fact '  in  the  relatively  uncritical 
way  appropriate  to  science  as  distinguished  from 
philosophy.  So  understanding  him,  and  contenting 
ourselves,  so  far  as  this  book  is  concerned,  with 
his  interim  solution*  of  the  larger  problem,  we 
will  in  our  next  chapter  note  the  more  important 
and  original  points  in  his  psychological  theory  of 
will. 

*  "  A  common  opinion  prevails  that  the  juice  has  ages  ago 
been  pressed  out  of  the  free-will  controversy,  and  that  no 
new  champion  can  do  more  than  warm  up  stale  arguments 
which  everyone  has  heard.  This  is  a  radical  mistake.  I 
know  of  no  subject  less  worn  out,  or  in  which  inventive 
genius  has  a  better  chance  of  breaking  open  new  ground  ; 
not,  perhaps,  of  forcing  a  conclusion  or  of  coercing  assent, 
but  of  deepening  our  sense  of  what  the  issue  between  the  two 
parties  really  is,  of  what  the  ideas  of  fate  and  of  free  will 
imply  ''  (Will  to  Believe,  p.  145). 


CHAPTEE    fl 
will — continued 

James's  theory  will  best  be  given  almost  entirely  in 
his  own  words  : 

"  An  anticipatory  image  of  the  sensorial  conse- 
quences of  a  movement,  plus  (on  certain  occasions) 
the  fiat  that  these  consequences  shall  become 
actual,  is  the  only  psychic  state  which  introspection 
lets  us  discern  as  the  forerunner  of  our  voluntary 
acts.  There  is  no  introspective  evidence  whatever 
of  any  still  later  or  concomitant  feeling  attached  to 
the  efferent  discharge.  The  various  degrees  of 
difficulty  with  which  the  fiat  is  given  form  a  com- 
plication of  the  utmost  importance  to  be  discussed 
farther  on."*  [I.e.,  there  really  is  such  a  thing  as 
an  effort  of  will ;  but  this  real  effort  must  not  be 
confounded  with  a  purely  hypothetical  and  useless 
'  feeling  of  innervation,'  or  discharge  of  nervous 
energy.  We  must  note,  however,  in  this  passage, 
as  throughout  James's  whole  chapter  on  Will,  a 

*  Principles,  vol  ii.,  p.  501. 

49  4 


50  WILLIAM  JAMES 

certain  vagueness  in  his  use  of  the  word,  in 
that  bo  extends  it  to  acts  performed  without 
any  '  fiat,'  and  as  a  simple  result  of  unimpeded 
attention  to  an  idea.  At  the  same  time,  it  must 
be  admitted  that  attention  itself,  being  essentially 
selective,  does  contain  an  element  of  choice ;  so  that 
it  is  impossible  to  draw  a  hard-and-fast  line  between 
'  effortless  '  attention  and  '  express  consent.'] 

"  The  entire  content  and  material  of  our  con- 
sciousness— consciousness  of  movement,  as  of  all 
things  else — is  thus  of  peripheral  origin,  and  came 
to  us  in  the  first  instance  as  through  the  peripheral 
nerves.  If  it  be  asked  what  we  gain  by  this  sen- 
sationalistic  conclusion,  I  reply  that  we  gain,  at  any 
rate,  simplicity  and  uniformity.  In  the  chapters 
on  Space,  on  Belief,  on  the  Emotions,  we  found 
sensation  to  be  a  much  richer  thing  than  is 
commonly  supposed ;  and  this  chapter  seems  at 
this  point  to  fall  into  line  with  those.  Then,  as 
for  sensationalism  being  a  degrading  belief,  which 
abolishes  all  inward  originality  and  spontaneity, 
there  is  this  to  be  said,  that  the  advocates  of 
inward  spontaneity  may  be  turning  their  backs  on 
its  real  citadel,  when  they  make  a  fight  on  its 
behalf  for  the  consciousness  of  energy  put  forth  in 
the  outgoing  discharge.  Let  there  be  no  such 
consciousness ;    let  all  our  thoughts  of  movement 


WILL  51 

be  of  sensational  constitution  ;  still,  in  the  empha- 
sizing, choosing,  and  espousing  of  one  of  them 
rather  than  another,  in  the  saying  to  it,  '  Be  thou 
the  reality  for  me,'  there  is  ample  scope  for  our 
inward  initiative  to  be  shown.  Here,  it  seems  to 
me,  the  true  line  between  the  passive  materials 
and  the  activity  of  the  spirit  should  be  drawn.  It 
is  certainly  false  strategy  to  draw  it  between  such 
ideas  as  are  connected  with  the  outgoing  and  such 
as  are  connected  with  the  incoming  neural  wave  " 
(p.  517/.). 

"  The  first  point  to  start  from  in  understanding 
voluntary  *  action,  and  the  possible  occurrence  of 
it  with  no  fiat  or  express  resolve,  is  the  fact  that 
consciousness  is  in  its  very  nature  impulsive.  .  .  . 
Movement  is  the  natural  immediate  effect  of  feeling, 
irrespective  of  what  the  quality  of  the  feeling  may  he. 
It  is  so  in  reflex  action,  it  is  so  in  emotional  expres- 
sion, it  is  so  in  the  voluntary  life.  Ideo-motor 
action  [i.e.,  action  following  immediately  on  the 
idea  without  '  express  consent ']  is  thus  no  paradox, 
to  be  softened  or  explained  away.  It  obeys  the 
type  of  all  conscious  action  in  which  a  special  fiat 
is  involved"  (p.  526/.). 

"  We  are  now  in  a  position  to  describe  what 
happens  in  deliberate  action  when  the  mind  is  the 
*  See  observation  on  p.  49/. 


52  WILLIAM  JAMES 

seat  of  many  ideas  related  to  each  other  in 
antagonistic  or  in  favourable  ways.  One  of  the 
ideas  is  that  of  an  act.  By  itself  this  idea  would 
prompt  a  movement.  Some  of  the  additional  con- 
siderations, however,  which  are  present  to  con- 
sciousness block  the  motor  discharge,  whilst  others, 
on  the  contrary,  solicit  it  to  take  place.  The 
result  is  that  peculiar  feeling  of  inward  unrest 
known  as  indecision.  .  .  .  "When  finally  the 
original  suggestion  either  prevails  and  makes  the 
movement  take  place,  or  gets  definitely  quenched 
by  its  antagonists,  we  are  said  to  decide,  or  to  utter 
our  voluntary  fiat  in  favour  of  one  or  the  other  course. 
The  reinforcing  and  inhibiting  ideas  meanwhile 
are  termed  the  reasons  or  motives  by  which  the 
decision  is  brought  about"  (p.  528/.).  Volition, 
therefore,  in  the  strict  sense,  is  choice  from  among 
presented  alternatives  ;  and  in  its  most  typical  form 
takes  place  as  the  resolution  of  a  mental  conflict. 

James  then  proceeds  to  sketch  the  types  of 
decision,  of  which  for  our  present  purposes  only 
the  last  need  be  mentioned. 

"  In  the  fifth  and  final  type  of  decision,  the 
feeling  that  the  evidence  is  all  in,  and  that  reason 
has  balanced  the  books,  may  be  either  present  or 
absent.  But  in  either  case  we  feel,  in  deciding,  as 
if  we  ourselves  by  our  own  wilful  act  inclined  the 


WILL  53 

beam :  in  the  former  case  by  adding  our  living 
effort  to  the  weight  of  the  logical  reason  which, 
taken  alone,  seems  powerless  to  make  the  act  dis- 
charge ;  in  the  latter  by  a  kind  of  creative  contri- 
bution of  something  instead  of  a  reason  which  does 
a  reason's  work.  The  slow,  dead  heave  of  the  will 
that  is  felt  in  these  instances  makes  of  them  a 
class  altogether  different  subjectively  from  all  the 
preceding  classes.  What  the  heave  of  the  will 
betokens  metaphysically,  what  the  effort  might 
lead  us  to  infer  about  a  will-power  distinct  from 
motives,  are  not  matters  that  concern  us  yet. 
Subjectively  and  phenomenally,  the  feeling  of  effort, 
absent  from  the  former  decisions,  accompanies 
these"  (p.  534). 

"  The  existence  of  the  effort  as  a  phenomenal 
fact  in  our  consciousness  cannot,  of  course,  be 
doubted  or  denied.  Its  significance,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  a  matter  about  which  the  gravest  difference 
of  opinion  prevails.  Questions  as  momentous  as 
that  of  the  very  existence  of  spiritual  causality,  as 
vast  as  that  of  universal  predestination  or  free  will, 
depend  on  its  interpretation.  It  therefore  becomes 
essential  that  we  study  with  some  care  the  con- 
ditions under  which  the  feeling  of  volitional  effort 
is  found  "  (p.  535). 

Then   follows    a    discussion    of    the    difference 


54  WILLIAM  JAMES 

between    the    healthy    and    the    unhealthy    will. 
Speaking  of  the  '  obstructed  will,'  James  says  : 

"  In  Chapter  XXL  ...  it  was  said  that  the 
sentiment  of  reality  with  which  an  object  appealed 
to  the  mind  is  proportionate  (amongst  other  things) 
to  its  efficacy  as  a  stimulus  to  the  will.  Here  we 
get  the  obverse  side  of  the  truth.  Those  ideas, 
objects,  considerations,  which  (in  these  lethargic 
states)  fail  to  get  to  the  will,  fail  to  draw  blood, 
seem,  in  so  far  forth,  distant  and  unreal.  The 
connection  of  the  reality  of  things  with  their 
effectiveness  as  motives  is  a  tale  that  has  never  yet 
been  fully  told.  The  moral  tragedy  of  human  life 
comes  almost  wholly  from  the  fact  that  the  link  is 
ruptured  which  normally  should  hold  between 
vision  of  the  truth  and  action,  and  that  this 
pungent  sense  of  effective  reality  will  not  attach  to 
certain  ideas  "  (p.  546/.). 

"We  now  see  at  one  view  when  it  is  that  effort 
complicates  volition.  It  does  so  whenever  a  rarer 
and  more  ideal  impulse  is  called  upon  to  neutralize 
others  of  a  more  instinctive  and  habitual  kind  ;  it 
does  so  whenever  strongly  explosive  tendencies  are 
checked,  or  strongly  obstructive  conditions  over- 
come. .  .  .  Now,  our  spontaneous  way  of  conceiving 
the  effort,  under  all  these  circumstances,  is  as  an 
active   force   adding   its   strength   to   that   of  the 


WILL  55 

motives  which  ultimately  prevail.  When  outer 
forces  impinge  upon  a  body,  we  say  that  the 
resultant  motion  is  in  the  line  of  least  resistance  or 
of  greatest  traction.  But  it  is  a  curious  fact  that 
our  spontaneous  language  never  speaks  of  volition 
with  effort  in  this  way.  Of  course,  if  we  proceed 
a  priori  and  define  the  line  of  least  resistance  as 
the  line  that  is  followed,  the  physical  law  must 
also  hold  good  in  the  mental  sphere.  But  we  feel, 
in  all  hard  cases  of  volition,  as  if  the  line  taken, 
when  the  rarer  and  more  ideal  motives  prevail,  were 
the  line  of  greater  resistance,  and  as  if  the  line  of 
coarser  motivation  were  the  more  pervious  and 
easy  one,  even  at  the  very  moment  when  we  refuse 
to  follow  it.  He  who  under  the  surgeon's  knife 
represses  cries  of  pain,  or  he  who  exposes  himself 
to  social  obloquy  for  duty's  sake  .  .  .  speaks  of 
conquering  and  overcoming  his  impulses  and 
temptations.  But  the  sluggard,  the  drunkard,  the 
coward,  never  talk  of  their  conduct  in  that  way  or 
say  they  resist  their  energy,  overcome  their  sobriety, 
conquer  their  courage,  and  so  forth.  .  .  .  And  if  a 
brief  definition  of  ideal  or  moral  action  were 
required,  none  could  be  given  which  would  better 
fit  the  appearances  than  this :  It  is  action  in  the 
line  of  greatest  resistance."  The  effort  "appears 
adventitious   and  indeterminate  in   advance.     We 


56  WILLIAM  JAMES 

can  make  more  or  less  as  we  please,  and  if  we 
make  enough,  we  can  convert  the  greatest  mental 
resistance  into  the  least.  Such,  at  least,  is  the 
impression  which  the  facts  spontaneously  produce 
upon  us"  (p.  548/.). 

"  We  have  now  brought  things  to  a  point  at 
which  we  see  that  attention  with  effort  is  all  that 
any  case  of  volition  [in  the  strict  sense]  implies. 
The  essential  achievement  of  the  will,  in  short,  when 
it  is  most '  voluntary,'  is  to  attend  to  a  difficult  object 
and  hold  it  fast  before  the  mind.  The  so-doing  is 
the  fiat;  and  it  is  a  mere  physiological  incident 
that  when  the  object  is  thus  attended  to,  immediate 
motor  consequences  should  ensue.  .  .  .  Effort  oj 
attention  is  thus  the  essential  phenomenon  of  will  " 
(p.  561/.). 

The  final  statement  of  the  psychological  problem 
runs  thus : 

"If  we  admit  that  our  thoughts  exist,  we  ought 
to  admit  that  they  exist  after  the  fashion  in  which 
they  appear,  as  things,  namely,  that  supervene 
upon  each  other,  sometimes  with  effort  and  some- 
times with  ease ;  the  only  questions  being,  Is  the 
effort  where  it  exists  a  fixed  function  of  the  object 
[of  the  idea],  which  the  latter  imposes  on  the 
thought  ?  or  is  it  such  an  independent  '  variable ' 
that  with  a  constant  object  more  or  less  of  it  may 
be  made  ? 


WILL  57 

"  It  certainly  appears  to  us  indeterminate,  and  as 
if,  even  with  an  unchanging  object,  we  might  make 
more  or  less  as  we  choose.  If  it  be  really  indeter- 
minate, our  future  acts  are  ambiguous  or  unpre- 
destinate ;  in  common  parlance  our  ivills  are  free. 
If  the  amount  of  effort  be  not  indeterminate,  but 
be  related  in  a  fixed  manner  to  the  objects  them- 
selves, in  such  wise  that  whatever  object  at  any 
time  fills  our  consciousness  was  from  eternity  bound 
to  fill  it  then  and  there,  and  compel  from  us  the 
exact  effort,  neither  more  nor  less,  which  we  bestow 
upon  it — then  our  wills  are  not  free,  and  all  our 
acts  are  foreordained.  The  question  of  fact  in  the 
free-will  controversy  is  tints  extremely  simple.  It 
relates  solely  to  the  amount  of  effort  of  attention  or 
consent  which  we  can  at  any  time  put  forth.  Are 
the  duration  and  intensity  of  this  effort  fixed 
functions  of  the  object,  or  are  they  not  ?"  (p.  570/.). 

On  the  '  question  of  fact,'  then,  James's  position 
is  very  definite.  But  I  believe  that  he  would  have 
done  better  to  trace  the  emergence  of  free  will 
farther  back,  to  the  point  where  active  consent 
emerges,  irrespective  of  the  amount,  or  even  the 
quality,  of  effort.  In  a  previous  passage  *  James 
does,  in  fact,  explicitly  assign  to  consent  the  im- 
portance that  he  here  assigns  to  '  effort.'  My  sug- 
*  Principles,  vol.  ii.,  p.  518,  quoted  supra,  pp.  50-51. 


58  WILLIAM  JAMES 

gestion  is  that  in  departing  from  that  position  he  is 
committing  a  strategical  error  similar  to  that  which 
he  deprecates  in  those  who  pin  their  faith  on  the 
'  feeling  of  innervation.'* 

James  should,  and  I  think  would,  if  he  had  taken 
full  advantage  of  his  own  innovations,  have  main- 
tained squarely  that  in  the  last  resort  Freedom  and 
Will  are  synonymous.  It  is  plain  that  by  '  effort,' 
in  the  passage  last  quoted,  James  means,  more 
particularly,  painful  effort.  Consent  with  '  effort,' 
in  this  sense,  is  no  doubt  the  most  striking  self- 
assertion  of  freedom ;  but  it  occurs  merely  when 
the  embraced  alternative  is  in  any  respect  envisaged 
as  disagreeable,  or  perhaps  positively  repulsive. 
The  existence  of  real  choice — whether  with  effort  or 
with  enthusiasm — in  presence  of  real  alternatives, 
is,  surely,  the  essential  thing  to  establish.  Will  is 
choice;  and  if  the  choice  is  real,  then  the  will  isfree. 

The  '  question  of  fact,'  then,  if  it  can  be  properly 
so  called,  is  simply  this :  Is  the  act  of  will  really 
what  it  seems  to  be  to  the  agent  himself  in  the  act 
of  willing  ?  Is,  or  is  not,  will  to  be  taken  at  what 
James  calls  its  '  face-value' ?t     Determinist  meta- 

*  Principles,  vol.  ii.,  p.  518,  quoted  supra,  pp.  50-51. 

t  Taking  the  fundamental  aspects  of  consciousness  at  their 
'  face-value'  constitutes  the  essence  of  what  James  (in  his  later 
use  of  the  term)  calls  radical  empiricism.    Cf.  supra,  p.  86. 


WILL  59 

physicians,  out  of  regard  for  the  '  unity '  of  the 
universe,  and  determinist  psychologists,  out  of 
regard  for  the  abstract  '  law  of  causation,'  both 
assume  unhesitatingly  that  will  must  not  be  so 
taken.  But  what  does  this  denial  really  amount 
to  ?  In  thus  asserting  the  a  priori  impossibility  of 
freedom,  determinists  have  not  merely  begged  the 
question ;  they  have  also  committed  themselves  to 
a  most  peculiar  interpretation  of  the  expression 
'  a  Eational  Universe.'  For  by  this  denial  they 
have  gratuitously  converted  will  itself,  and,  indeed, 
'  finite  consciousness '  in  general,  into  a  hope- 
lessly unintelligible  '  appearance.'  And  for  this 
reason :  If  there  is  no  real  choice,  will  drags 
thought  with  it  in  becoming,  biologically,  a 
meaningless  superfluity.  We  are  not  to  believe 
that  our  will  can  perform  the  work  which  it 
believes  itself  to  be  performing ;  and  yet  no  one 
has  been  able  to  suggest  any  other  biological  purpose 
that  it  might  fulfil.  The  conception  of  a  function- 
less  will  is  what  Determinism  therefore  stands  for, 
if  it  means  anything  at  all;  and  yet  will,  as  the 
exercise  of  choice,  is,  as  James  has  conclusively 
shown,  just  the  functional  aspect  of  human  intelligence. 
In  condemning  freedom,  therefore,  Determinism 
has  literally  reduced  will  to  a  nonentity,  and  in 
so  doing  it  has  really  condemned  '  finite  conscious- 


60  WILLIAM  JAMES 

ness  '  in  toto.  Nor  can  the  situation  be  even  verbally 
redeemed  by  the  purely  metaphysical  (in  the  very 
worst  sense  of  that  word)  interpretation  of  human 
consciousness  as  the  '  reproduction  '  or  '  self-revela- 
tion '  of  Reality.  For  a  reproduction  of  reality  is, 
on  monistic  or  deterministic  principles,  precisely 
what  our  consciousness  is  not* 

In  other  words,  under  the  guise  of  denying  the 
reality  of  freedom,  determinists  have  in  effect 
asserted  that  the  human  consciousness  in  general, 
and  will  in  particular,  represent  a  wild  outbreak  of 
impotent  irrationality — and  the  greater  the  impo- 
tence of  the  consciousness,  the  profounder  the  irra- 
tionality of  the  outbreak — within  the  '  universe ' 
whose  absolute  rationality  they  professed  to  vindi- 
cate. Such  is  the  logical  nemesis  of  refusing  to 
take  the  willing-experience  at  its  face-value  on  the 
strength  of  the  easy-going  assumption  that  ration- 
ality and  individual  freedom  must  be  antagonistic 
principles.  It  would  appear  on  the  whole  simpler, 
and  perhaps  more  rational,  to  regard  the  theory  oj 
Determinism  as  an  irrational  outbreak  on  the  part 
of  certain  '  finite  centres  of  consciousness,'  than 
to  regard  '  finite  consciousness '  as  breaking  up 
the    whole    scheme    of    a    would-be    'rational' 

*  This  last  point  will  be  more  fully  brought  out  in  our 
final  chapter. 


WILL  61 

Universe.  To  dichotomize  man  into  agent  and 
spectator  (a  spectator,  too,  not  of  reality,  but  of 
'appearance'),  to  set  these  two  eternally  at  cross- 
purposes,  and  then  arbitrarily  to  identify  '  Reason  ' 
with  the  spectator  rather  than  with  the  agent — 
can  this  really  be  the  last  word  of  philosophic 
enlightenment  and  the  highest  achievement  of 
philosophic  '  unification  '  ? 

In  all  James  wrote  the  immediate  context  is  all- 
important.  If  we  take  the  Principles  as  a  whole 
as  the  relevant  context  here,  and  if  we  bear  in  mind 
the  methodological  difficulty  previously  alluded  to,* 
I  think  we  may  fairly  claim  that  the  suggestions 
just  made  should  rank  as  a  legitimate  interpretation 
of  James's  real  meaning.  At  the  very  least  this 
interpretation  is  thoroughly  in  harmony  with  his 
general  outlook.  At  no  stage  of  his  development 
did  James  himself,  we  must  remember,  feel  that 
he  had  finally  plumbed  the  depths  of  these 
ultimate  questions.  He  was  not  himself  so  faith- 
less to  the  principles  of  the  open  door  and  the  open 
mind  of  which  his  whole  philosophy  is  such  an 
eloquent  defence.  Speaking  in  1904  of  "  the 
urgent  problems  of  activity,"  he  makes  an  admis- 
sion, rare  indeed  among  philosophers,  who  com- 
*  P.  42. 


62  WILLIAM  JAMES 

monly  pretend  that  philosophy  excels  science 
because  it  must  (however  absurdly)  claim  finality. 
"  So  far,"  he  says,  "  am  I  from  suggesting  any 
definite  answer  to  such  questions  that  I  hardly  yet 
can  put  them  clearly."* 

But  to  return  to  James's  own  account  of  will. 
After  discussing  the  "  logic  of  the  question,"!  he 
adds  these  remarks  on  the  scientific  postulate  of 
causation  : 

"What,  quite  as  much  as  the  [alleged]  incon- 
ceivability of  absolutely  independent  variables, 
persuades  modern  men  of  science  that  their  efforts 
must  be  predetermined,  is  the  continuity  of  the 
latter  with  other  phenomena  whose  predetermina- 
tion no  one  doubts.  Decisions  with  effort  merge  so 
gradually  into  those  without  it  that  it  is  not  easy  to 
say  where  the  limit  lies.  Decisions  without  effort 
merge  again  into  ideo-motor,  and  these  into  reflex, 
acts ;  so  that  the  temptation  is  almost  irresistible 
to  throw  the  formula  which  covers  so  many  cases 
over  absolutely  all.  Where  there  is  effort,  just  as 
where  there  is  none,  the  ideas  themselves  which 
furnish  the  matter  of  deliberation  are  brought 
before  the  mind  by  the  machinery  of  association." 
[But,  as  James  has  previously  pointed   out,   the 

*  Essays  in  Radical  Empiricism,  p.  188/. 
+  Supra,  p.  45/ 


WILL  63 

'  laws  of  association  '  cannot  account  for  the  actual 
course  of  our  thoughts  even  in  reverie.  "  Always 
some  ingredient  is  prepotent  over  the  rest.  In 
subjective  terms,  we  say  that  the  prepotent  items 
are  those  which  appeal  most  to  our  interest."*  And 
interest  is  through  and  through  selective.]  "  Eeally 
both  effort  and  resistance  are  ours,  and  the  identifi- 
cation of  our  self  with  one  of  these  factors  is  an 
illusion  and  a  trick  of  speech  [according  to  the 
deterministic  view].  I  do  not  see  how  anyone  can 
fail  (especially  when  the  mythologic  dynamism  of 
separate  '  ideas '  ...  is  translated  into  that  of 
brain-processes)  to  recognize  the  fascinating  sim- 
plicity of  some  such  view  as  this.  Nor  do  I  see 
why  for  scientific  purposes  one  need  give  it  up  even 
if  indeterminate  amounts  of  effort  really  do  occur. 
Before  their  indeterminism  science  simply  stops. 
She  can  abstract  from  it  altogether  then  ;  for  in  the 
impulses  and  inhibitions  with  which  the  effort  has 
to  cope  there  is  already  a  larger  field  than  she  can 
ever  practically  cultivate.  Her  prevision  will  never 
foretell,  even  if  the  effort  be  completely  predes- 
tinate, the  actual  way  in  which  each  individual 
emergency  is  resolved.  Psychology  will  be  Psycho- 
logy, and  Science  Science,  as  much  as  ever  (as 
much  and  no  more)  in  this  world,  whether  free 
*  Principles,  vol.  i.,  pp.  571-572. 


64  WILLIAM  JAMES 

will  be  true  in  it  or  not.  Science,  however,  must 
be  constantly  reminded  that  her  purposes  are  not 
the  only  purposes,  and  that  the  order  of  uniform 
causation  which  she  has  use  for,  and  is  therefore 
right  in  postulating,  may  be  enveloped  in  a  wider 
order,  on  which  she  has  no  claims  at  all  "  (p.  574/.). 
In  other  words,  determination,  though  a  postu- 
late of  absolute  ideal  predictability  in  events,  can 
never  in  practice  be  actually  traced.  So  that 
Indeterminism,  even  if  taken  as  covering  the  whole 
field  of  selective  activity,  cannot  conflict  with 
scientific  practice,  but  only  with  a  metaphysical,  or 
quasi-metaphysical,  ideal.  James  is,  therefore, 
thoroughly  justified  in  this  pungent  comment  on 
Spencer :  "  Such  ejaculations  as  Mr.  Spencer's 
'  psychical  changes  either  conform  to  law,  or  they 
do  not.  If  they  do  not,  this  work,  in  common  with 
all  works  on  the  subject,  is  sheer  nonsense:  no 
science  of  psychology  is  possible,'  are  beneath 
criticism.  Mr.  Spencer's  work,  like  all  the  other 
'  works  on  the  subject,'  treats  of  those  general 
conditions  of  possible  conduct,  within  which  all 
our  real  decisions  must  fall,  whether  their  effort  be 
small  or  great.  However  closely  psychical  changes 
may  conform  to  law,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  individual 
histories  and  biographies  will  never  be  written  in 
advance,  no  matter  how  '  evolved  '  psychology  may 


WILL  65 

become  "  (p.  576  n.).  And,  again,  speaking  of  the 
"caricatures,"  in  deterministic  literature,  "of  the 
kind  of  supposition  which  free  will  demands,"  he 
points  out  that  we  must  distinguish  "  between  the 
possibles  which  really  tempt  a  man,  and  those 
which  tempt  him  not  at  all.  Free  will,  like 
psychology,  deals  with  the  former  possibles  ex- 
clusively" (p.  577  n.). 

An  important  quotation  from  The  Experience  of 
Activity*  may  conclude  this  chapter :  "  The  only 
'  free  will '  I  have  ever  thought  of  defending  is  the 
character  of  novelty  in  fresh  activity -situations.  \  If 
an  activity-process  is  the  form  of  a  whole  '  field  of 
consciousness,'  and  if  each  field  of  consciousness  is 
not  only  in  its  totality  unique  (as  is  now  commonly 
admitted),  but  has  its  elements  unique  (since  in 
that  situation  they  are  all  dyed  in  the  total),  then 
novelty  is  perpetually  entering  the  world,t  and  what 
happens  there  is  not  pure  repetition,  as  the 
dogma  of  the  literal  uniformity  of  nature  requires. 
Activity-situations  come,  in  short,  each  with  an 
original  touch."  I 

*  See  A  Pluralistic  Universe,  p.  391  n.  This  essay  is 
republished  also  in  Essays  in  Radical  Empiricism. 

f  Italics  mine. 

I  Cf.  Some  Problems  of  Philosophy,  p.  145  :  "  Towards 
this  issue  of    the  reality  or  unreality  of   the   novelty  that 

5 


66  WILLIAM  JAMES 

Such  a  declaration  points  forward  to  Bergson's 
'  Creative  Evolution,'  but  the  novelty  it  demands 
entered  the  scientific  world  (rather  unobtrusively) 
with  Darwin's  '  spontaneous  variation.' 

appears,  the  pragmatic  difference  between  monism  and 
pluralism  seems  to  converge.  That  we  ourselves  may  be 
authors  of  genuine  novelty  is  the  thesis  of  the  doctrine  of 
free  will."  And  Pragmatism,  p.  257:  "The  essential  con- 
trast [between  pragmatism  and  rationalism]  is  that  for 
rationalism  reality  is  ready-made  and  complete  from  all 
eternity,  while  for  pragmatism  it  is  still  in  the  making,  and 
awaits  part  of  its  complexion  from  the  future."  (James  puts 
this  sentence  in  italics.) 


CHAPTEE  VII 

UTILITY   AND    THE    SURVIVAL    OF    BELIEFS 

The  order  of  the  Principles  is  not  quite  systematic, 
and  hardly  brings  out  the  close  connection  which 
existed  in  James's  thought  between  acts  of  belief 
and  of  will.*  But  the  root-idea  in  James's  account 
of  judgment  is  that  belief,  like  will,  is  "a  manifes- 
tation of  our  active  nature."  Belief  "in  its  inner 
nature  is  a  sort  of  feeling  more  allied  to  emotion 
than  to  anything  else.  ...  It  resembles  more 
than  anything  what  in  the  psychology  of  volition 
we  know  as  consent.  .  .  .  What  characterizes  both 
consent  and  belief  is  the  cessation  of  theoretic 
agitation  through  the  advent  of  an  idea  which  is 
inwardly  stable,  and  fills  the  mind  solidly  to  the 
exclusion  of  contradictory  ideas.  When  this  is 
the  case,  motor  effects  are  apt  to  follow.     Hence 

*  Cf.,  e.g.,  Principles,  vol.  ii.,  p.  321  :  ""Will  and  Belief, 
in  short,  meaning  a  certain  relation  between  objects  and  the 
Self,  are  two  names  for  one  and  the  same  psychological 
phenomenon.  All  the  questions  which  arise  concerning  one 
are  questions  which  arise  concerning  the  other." 

67 


68  WILLIAM  JAMES 

the  states  of  consent  and  belief,  characterized  by 
repose  on  the  intellectual  side,  are  both  intimately 
connected  with  subsequent  practical  activity."* 
In  other  words,  belief,  as  a  function  of  the  whole 
man,  exists  for  the  sake  of  action. 

Now,  prior  to  this  recognition  of  the  intimate 
psychical  connection  between  belief  and  action,  it 
seemed  easy  to  draw  a  hard-and-fast  line  between 
the  psychology  of  belief  or  '  cognition  '  and  logic ; 
just  as,  by  assuming  that  in  psychology  choice  must 
be  treated  as  an  illusion,  it  seemed  easy  to  draw  a 
hard-and-fast  line  between  the  psychology  of 
volition  and  ethics.  For  the  psychologist,  as  such, 
seemed  to  be  concerned  only  with  belief  as  a 
subjective  affection,  and  not  at  all  with  the  dis- 
tinction between  true  belief  and  false  belief.  That 
distinction,  therefore,  as  involving  the  relation 
between  mind  and  reality  at  large,  belonged  wholly 
to  logic  and  metaphysics. 

But  when  belief  is  recognized  as  strictly  a 
function  of  the  organism,  and  when  we  observe 
that  this  function  is  to  establish  harmonious 
relations  between  the  organism  and  the  circum- 
ambient reality,  or  environment,  it  becomes  im- 
possible to  maintain  so  simple  a  distinction  between 
psychology  and  logic.  For  belief,  taken  quite 
*  Principles,  vol.  ii. ,  p.  283/. 


UTILITY  AND  SURVIVAL  69 

abstractly,  simply  qua  belief,  has  not  the  slightest 
biological  meaning.  Broadly  speaking,  it  is  only 
true  beliefs  that  are  useful  for  life.  Knowledge, 
indeed,  is  power ;  but  error  spells  impotence  and 
disaster. 

More  precisely,  the  modern  psychologist,  just 
because  he  is  also  a  biologist,  is  interested,  not  in 
consciousness  as  a  theoretic  puzzle,  but  in  con- 
sciousness as  an  element  in  intelligent  behaviour. 
From  this  standpoint  he  must  distinguish  between 
beliefs  that  make  for  efficiency  and  those  that  do 
not.  Taken  thus  concretely,  thought  inevitably 
seems  an  instrument  for  individual  and  active 
adaptation  to  the  world  we  live  in.  It  is  therefore 
in  indissoluble  connection  with  the  Darwinian 
notions  of  utility  and  survival  -  value  that  the 
distinction  between  real  truth  and  real  error 
becomes  relevant  to  psychology.  '  Truth,'  func- 
tionally interpreted,  is  that  which  subserves  the 
organism's  purposes,  and  '  error '  is  that  which 
does  not.  Whatever  '  truth '  may  be  '  in  itself,' 
truth  as  applicable  to  life  is  what  we  literally  must 
have,  or  die.  Thus  vital  utility  is  the  only  criterion 
which  the  living  organism  itself  can  either  desire 
or  afford  to  apply  in  the  actual  business  of  living. 
But  the  utility  must,  of  course,  be  a  felt  utility,  in 
order  to  be  a  real  guide  in  action. 


70  WILLIAM  JAMES 

In  all  this,  we  are  not  laying  down  the  law  as  to 
what  '  absolute  truth '  must  be  from  some  supra- 
mundane  and  '  logically  disinterested '  point  of 
view — a  point  of  view  which  must  inevitably  give 
rise  to  the  further  questions  whether  such  '  truth ' 
is  desirable,  and,  if  desirable,  attainable  by  man. 
We  are  simply  pointing  out  that  there  is  a  kind  of 
truth  which  is  accessible  to  man,  and  that  this  kind 
of  truth  is  not  a  luxury,  but  a  necessity.  This, 
however,  is  enough  to  give  psychology  admission 
to  the  preserves  of  logic  and  metaphysics.  So  far 
as  knowledge  is  beneficial,  the  problem  of  the 
'  possibility  of  knowledge '  is  ipso  facto  solved : 
that  is  to  say,  it  is  solved  by  the  recognition  of 
what  '  knowledge  '  means  for  the  conscious 
organism. 

It  is  quite  consistent  with  his  view  of  the  place 
of  consciousness  in  life  in  general,  and  more  par- 
ticularly in  human  life,  that  James  does  not  regard 
that  alone  as  beneficial  which  furthers  mere 
physical  existence.  There  is,  indeed,  a  physical 
basis  for  the  pyramid  of  vital  needs.  But  a  living 
organism  that  has  more  than  material  existence 
also  has,  or  may  have,  more  than  material  needs. 
What,  in  James's  view,  constitutes  the  continuity 
between  these  other,  spiritual,  needs  and  the  basic, 
material,  needs,  is  that  both  kinds  connect  with 


UTILITY  AND  SUEVIVAL  71 

behaviour  or  conduct  of  some  sort.*"  In  this  way, 
as  we  have  already  seen,  the  principle  of  utility, 
which  at  first  was  erroneously  taken  as  of  purely 
materialistic  tendency,  not  only  allows  us,  as  no 
merely  metaphysical  principle  does,  to  substi- 
tute autonomy  for  automatism,  but  also  bridges 
the  gap  between  the  physical  and  the  spiritual 
life. 

The  next  step  is  that  the  organism's  activity  is 
not  confined  to  adjusting  itself  to  a  merely  given 
environment.  Even  from  a  merely  external  point 
of  view,  the  organism  is  also  busied  in  adjusting 
the  environment  to  itself.  Man,  more  particularly, 
has  made  the  actual  physical  world  that  he  now 
lives  in  a  very  different  thing  from  what  it  was 
when  he  first  made  his  appearance  on  the  scene. 
The  physical  environment  into  which  we  have 
been  born  is  as  much  a  man-made  as  a  '  natural ' 
environment.  So  much  is  quite  obvious.  But  still 
more  important  is  the  '  subjective '  manipulation 
to  which  the  '  environment '  is  subjected  by  the 
process  of  conscious  selection.  This  selection,  just 
because  it  is  purposive,  is  not  merely  arbitrary  ;  it 
is  always  experimental.  But  so  far  as  the  experi- 
ment is  successful,  it  actually  creates  the  world  as  that 

*  Cf.,  e.g.,  "Reflex  Action  and  Theism"  in  The  Will  to 
Believe,  and  infra,  pp.  91-93. 


72  WILLIAM  JAMES 

exists  for  consciousness.  This  is  what,  even  more 
than  his  discovery  of  the  principle  of  continuity  in 
consciousness,  so  sharply  differentiates  James's 
empiricism  from  that  of  the  older  empiricists,  from 
Locke  to  Spencer,  who  always  sought  to  explain 
knowledge  as  the  passive  '  reproduction '  of  an 
1  independent  order  of  nature.'  For  these  older 
empiricists,  '  learning  by  experience '  meant  the 
hoarding  of  sense  -  impressions  ;  and  anything 
beyond  this  was  not  fact,  but  'fiction,'  as  Hume 
expressly  maintains.  But,  for  James,  '  learning 
by  experience '  means  learning  by  experiment ;  and 
'  pure  fact '  is  the  greatest  fiction  of  all.  In  the 
extension  of  knowledge,  thought  does  not  simply 
lean  on  experiential  data;  it  leads  the  way,  and 
the  function  of  experience  is  chiefly  to  confirm  or 
reject  postulates  which  passive  experience  and  the 
'  laws  of  association '  can  never  automatically 
generate.  The  difference  between  these  two  views 
corresponds  exactly  with  the  difference  between  the 
Darwinian  and  Spencerian  views  as  to  the  main 
factors  in  organic  evolution.* 

On  the  other  hand,  what  chiefly  distinguishes 
James's   view,  both   from   the   so-called   '  Critical 

*  All  this  is  very  fully  set  forth  in  the  remarkable  chapter 
on  "  Necessary  Truths  and  the  Effects  of  Experience  "  which 
concludes  the  Principles. 


UTILITY  AND  SUEVIVAL  73 

Philosophy '  of  Kant,*  and  from  the  '  Objective 
Idealism '  of  the  English  Idealists  (neo-Kantians 
or  neo-Hegelians,  as  they  are  indifferently  called), 
is  that  James  is  not  so  intent  on  explaining  the 
'  possibility  of  knowledge  '  as  to  overlook  the 
necessity  of  allowing  for  the  possibility  of  real  and 
effective  criticism. 

His  conception  of  the  nature  of  '  knowledge,' 
while  it  precludes  the  severance  of  '  knowledge ' 
from  'reality,'  does  not  exclude  either  the  possi- 
bility of  progress  in  knowledge  or  of  development 
in  reality.  Just  because  James  adopts  the  common- 
sense  view  which  regards  thought  as  a  temporal 
and  personal  process,  the  '  constructive  activity  of 
thought '  in  which  he  believes  is  for  him  no  violent 
metaphor,  but  a  living  reality ;  and  the  construction 
does  not  exclude  re-construction.  Contrariwise,  in 
the  hands  of  the  'Idealists,'  for  whom  thought  is 
essentially  '  timeless,'  "  The  Reality  coalesces  with 
the  connected  manifold,  the  Psychologist  with  the 
Ego,  knowing  becomes  '  connecting,'  and  there 
results  no  longer  a  finite  or  criticizable,  but  an 
'  absolute'  Experience,  of  which  the  Object  and  the 
Subject  are  always  the  same.  .  .  .  This  '  solip- 
sistic '   character   of   an  Experience  conceived   as 

*  For  James's  relation  to  Kant,  apart  from  the  English 
versions  (or  perversions)  of  his  teachings,  see  infra,  p.  81  /. 


74  WILLIAM  JAMES 

absolute  really  annihilates  psychology  as  a  dis- 
tinct body  of  science,"*  and  with  it  the  reality, 
and  even  the  possibility,  of  human  knowledge. 

We  see,  therefore,  that,  in  the  favourite  phrase 
of  Histories  of  Philosophy,  James  may  be  said  to 
'  mediate '  between  Hume  and  Kant.  But  the 
'  mediation '  bears  a  wonderful  resemblance  to 
the  act  of  knocking  their  heads  together ;  and  it 
clearly  supersedes  them  both. 

*  Principles,  vol.  i.,  p.  366. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

BELIEF    AND    VALUE 

In  the  last  chapter  of  the  Principles  James  makes 
very  clear  a  distinction  that  is  implicit  in  his  earlier 
chapters — the  distinction,  namely,  between  the  origin 
and  survival  of  beliefs,  or  between  conscious  experi- 
ment and  experimental  confirmation.  A  belief  to 
be  taken  up  at  all  must  in  some  way  or  other 
appeal  to  us ;  it  must  connect  with  our  emotional 
nature  and  our  vital  needs.  But  since  beliefs  do 
not  provide  us  with  mere  '  objects  of  contem- 
plation,' and  are  genuine  in  proportion  to  their 
driving  power  in  action,  it  follows  that  only  those 
can  survive  which  do  actually  fulfil  the  hopes  in 
which  we  embraced  them.  James's  view  may  be 
summarily  stated  as  the  theory  that  what  deter- 
mines the  survival  of  beliefs  is  an  inter- play  be- 
tween conscious  selection  and  natural  selection. 
That  is  clearly  what  the  view  of  experience  as 
experimentation,  taken  in  conjunction  with  the 
"paramount   reality   of    sensations,"*  necessarily 

*  Principles,  vol.  ii.,  p.  299/. 
75 


76  WILLIAM  JAMES 

entails.  We  make  the  environment  to  fit; "but  it 
is  the  obligation  to  cut  our  coat  according  to  our 
cloth  that  gives  us  a  chance  of  really  using  our 
brains.  The  further  consideration,  however,  must 
not  be  overlooked,  that  while,  on  the  one  hand, 
experimental  '  success '  may  not  be  final,  on  the 
other  hand,  experimental  '  failure '  need  not  be 
so  either.  There  is,  in  fact,  nothing  from  which 
we  learn  so  much  as  from  our  mistakes.  If  we 
survive  the  failure  of  a  vital  experiment,  we  can 
try  again  on  other  lines  ;  and  if  we  don't  survive 
it,  our  fellows  may  profit  by  the  vicarious  experi- 
ence. This  is  notoriously  true  even  of  animals  like 
wolves  and  foxes. 

Out  of  these  considerations  arises  what  we  may 
call  the  Question  of  Value.  What  sort  of  end,  or 
ends,  beyond  the  primary  one  of  physical  existence 
— with  which  the  "  paramount  reality  of  sensa- 
tions "  is  most  intimately  connected — does  human 
thought  seek  to  compass  ?  And  what  sort  of 
results  can  we  acquiesce  in  ?  This  is  the  question 
which  James  first  brings  to  light  and  then  sets 
himself  to  answer  in  his  chapter  on  "  The  Percep- 
tion of  Eeality."  His  chief  points  seem  to  be 
these  : 

Our  system  of  beliefs  as  a  whole,  the  reality  that 
we  seek,  must  be  such  as  to  satisfy  our  whole  con- 


BELIEF  AND  VALUE  77 

crete  nature,  and  not  that  impossible  abstraction 
called  the  '  pure  intellect.'  We  do,  indeed,  seek 
unity.  But  the  unity  that  we  are  really  interested 
in  is  not  a  cold,  '  cosmic  unity,'  but  a  unification  of 
our  personal  self,  which  will  allow  free  play  to  all 
the  component  parts  of  our  nature,  without  reducing 
any  one  of  them  to  the  level  of  mere  illusion.  That 
is  what  constitutes  James's  anti-intellectualism. 

What  satisfies  one  man  will  not,  in  all  its  detail, 
satisfy  another.  That  is  what  constitutes  James's 
individualism.  This,  however,  is  not  an  anti-social 
force.  For  if  agreement  is  the  conservative  element 
in  social  life,  in  the  agreement  to  differ — i.e.,  to 
allow  each  man  to  try  his  own  vital  experiments  at 
his  own  risk — lies  the  only  hope  of  social  progress 
through  the  adoption  of  what  turn  out  to  be 
salutary  innovations.*  Even  in  the  case  of  such 
sharply  contrasted  categories  as  criminal  and  saint, 
we  must  not  forget  that  the  criminal  of  one  genera- 
tion— the  man,  e.g.,  who  furnishes  aid  and  comfort 
to  a  runaway  slave — may  be  the  moral  hero  of 
the  next ;  even  as  the  saint  of  yesterday — the  man, 

*  Cf.,  e.g.,  Memories  and  Studies,  p.  318  :  "The  notion 
that  a  people  can  run  itself  and  its  affairs  anonymously  is 
now  well  known  to  bo  the  silliest  of  absurdities.  Mankind 
does  nothing  save  through  initiatives  on  the  part  of  inventors, 
great  or  small,  and  imitation  by  the  rest  of  us — these  are  the 
Bole  factors  active  in  social  progress." 


78  WILLIAM  JAMES 

e.g.,  who  elects  to  spend  his  life  perched  on  a 
pillar — may  be  the  moral  lunatic  of  to-day.  Society 
must,  of  course,  in  each  generation  decide  what 
degree  and  what  manner  of  individual  initiative  to 
allow ;  but  it  makes  this  decision  at  its  own  risk. 
Thus  James's  individualism  provides  for  the  prac- 
tice of  toleration  a  rational  basis  which  is  not  to 
be  found  in  the  rival  and  wholly  sterile  conception 
of  '  absolute  truth.' 

Whatever  kind  or  degree  of  unity  we  '  find '  in 
Nature  is  made  by  our  own  exertions.  That  is 
what  constitutes  James's  activism  or  voluntarism.* 

The  constructive  work  of  intelligence,  however,  is 

*  To  Hume,  and  not  to  Kant,  belongs  the  credit  of  having 
first  seen  that  the  '  uniform  order '  of  Nature  is  not  an 
original  datum  of  experience,  but  an  intellectual  construction. 
Neither  of  these  writers,  however,  deemed  the  world  so 
constructed  to  be  fully  real.  Hume  held  that  the  result  of 
mental  manipulation  must  be  'fiction,'  and  Kant  i that  we 
know  only  '  phenomena,'  and  not  things  as  they  really  are 
in  themselves.  The  difference  between  these  two  general 
theories  of  '  knowledge '  is  not  very  appreciable.  Nor  is  it 
very  easy  to  understand  why  Kant  should  be  represented 
as  having  *  answered,'  rather  than  echoed,  Hume  as  regards 
the  status  of  the  principle  of  causality.  But  it  appears  to  be 
a  cardinal  doctrine  of  the  idealistic  faith  that  what  in  Kant 
is  ennobling  and  splendid  insight,  in  Hume  is  degrading 
1  scepticism.'  The  only  real  answer  to  Hume  lies  in  that 
revaluation  of  mental  manipulation  that  James  has  effected. 
Cf.  Some  Problems  of  Philosophy,  pp.  200-202. 


BELIEF  AND  VALUE  79 

not  achieved  at  one  stroke,  and  is  certainly  not  yet 
completed,  if  it  ever  will  be.  "In  a  simple  and 
direct  way  these  questions  cannot  be  answered  at 
all."  [I.e.,  they  cannot  be  answered  a  prion.]  "The 
whole  history  of  human  thought  is  but  an  unfinished 
attempt  to  answer  them.  For  what  have  men  been 
trying  to  find  out  since  men  were  men  but  just 
those  things :  '  Where  do  our  true  interests  lie — 
which  relations  shall  we  call  the  intimate  and  real 
ones — which  things  shall  we  call  living  realities 
and  which  not?'"*  That  is  what  constitutes 
James's  progressivism  or  evolutionism. 

Hence  there  can  be  no  a  priori  guarantee  that 
'  all  will  come  right  in  the  end.'  Eisk  cannot  be 
eliminated  from  the  spiritual  any  more  than  from 
the  physical  life.  As  in  the  physical  life  we  must 
have  courage,  so  in  the  spiritual  life  we  need  faith. 
This  last  point,  which  constitutes  what  we  may  call 
James's  'fideism,'  being  of  a  more  specially  ethical 
character,  is  not  directly  brought  out  in  the 
Principles.  It  is  developed  in  some  of  his  later 
writings,!  but  its  full  meaning  can  only  be  properly 
appreciated  if  we  have  grasped  its  psychological 
foundation.     This  is,  perhaps,  why  James's  critics 

*  Principles,  vol.  ii.,  p.  299. 

t  Especially  in  the  essay  "  Is  Life  Worth  Living?"  in  The 
Will  to  Believe. 


80  WILLIAM  JAMES 

have  generally  failed  to  appreciate  the  fact  that 
James  steadily  refuses  to  confound  moral  confidence 
with  '  logical  certitude.'  To  accuse  James  of 
irrationalism  because  he  thus  justifies  acts  of  faith 
is  as  if  one  were  to  accuse  a  soldier  of  stupidity 
because,  in  performing  some  deed  of  valour,  he 
could  have  had  no  guarantee  that  he  would  both 
succeed  in  his  venture  and  come  out  of  it  alive. 
There  certainly  are  people  who  flatter  themselves 
that  they  are  much  too  sensible  to  risk  their  lives 
in  that  way,  or  to  act,  in  issues  of  life  and  death, 
on  anything  short  of  '  reasonable  certainty.'  But 
the  eminent  reasonableness  of  their  attitude  does 
not  prevent  others  from  calling  them  by  an  exceed- 
ingly unpleasant  name.  And,  as  James  has  pointed 
out,  where  act  we  must,  our  confidence  that  we  shall 
succeed  may  itself  be  a  main  factor  in  procuring 
our  success.* 

"  There  is  really  no  scientific  or  other  method  by 
which  men  can  steer  safely  between  the  opposite 
dangers  of  believing  too  little  or  of  believing  too 
much.  To  face  such  dangers  is  apparently  our 
duty,  and  to  hit  the  right  channel  between  them  is 
the  measure  of  our  wisdom  as  men.  It  does  not 
follow,  because  recklessness  may  be  a  vice  in 
soldiers,  that  courage  ought  never  to  be  preached 
*  Will  to  Believe,  p.  59. 


BELIEF  AND  VALUE  81 

to  them.  What  should  be  preached  is  courage 
weighted  with  responsibility — such  courage  as  the 
Nelsons  and  Washingtons  never  failed  to  show 
after  they  had  taken  everything  into  account  that 
might  tell  against  their  success,  and  made  every 
provision  to  minimize  disaster.  I  do  not  think 
that  anyone  can  accuse  me  of  preaching  reckless 
faith.  I  have  preached  the  right  of  the  individual  to 
indulge  his  personal  faith  at  his  personal  risk*  I 
have  discussed  the  kinds  of  risk ;  I  have  contended 
that  none  of  us  escape  all  of  them  ;  and  I  have  only 
pleaded  that  it  is  better  to  face  them  open-eyed  than 
to  act  as  if  we  did  not  know  them  to  be  there."  t 

In  regard  to  all  the  foregoing  points,  James,  as 
befits  his  psychological  standpoint,  is,  so  to  speak, 
proceeding  from  within  outwards.  Starting  from 
the  aperqu  that  thought  is  the  intellectual  aspect  of 
the  will  to  live,  he  in  effect  asks  what  characteristics 
and  what  possibilities  '  reality '  must  offer  us  in 
order  to  get  itself  accepted  by  us,  and  in  order  to 
make  the  difficult  business  of  living  seem  worth 
while.  This,  finally,  is  what  constitutes  James's 
' anthropocentrism '  or  'relativism.'  There  is  an 
unmistakable  analogy  between  this  general  position 
and  the  '  Copernican  revolution '  which  Kant 
believed   himself   to   have  effected   in  philosophy. 

*  Italics  mine.  t   Will  to  Believe,  Freface,  p.  xi. 

6 


82  WILLIAM  JAMES 

With  this  difference— that  James's  avowedly 
psychological  standpoint  not  only  makes  the 
thought-process  a  real  process  in  time,  and  thereby 
makes  real  progress  possible,  but  also  saves  him 
from  the  theoretically  and  practically  ruinous 
divorce  between  the  '  theoretical '  and  the  '  prac- 
tical '  reason,  in  which  Kant's  philosophy  culmin- 
ates, and  collapses. 

A  highly  important  corollary,  as  to  the  relation  of 
logic  to  psychology,  follows  from  James's  treatment 
of  the  distinction  between  '  real '  and  '  unreal.' 
The  primary  concern  of  the  logician  is  neither 
with  that  purely  formal  '  reality '  which  every 
object  of  consciousness  possesses,  and  in  which  the 
distinction  between  '  real '  and  '  unreal '  has  not 
yet  emerged,  nor  with  the  '  real  world  '  which  we 
all  naively  and  uncritically  take  for  granted  as 
distinct  from  '  unreality,'  until  we  consider  the 
need  and  difficulty  of  effectively  distinguishing  the 
one  from  the  other.  What  he  really  has  to  eluci- 
date is  just  the  distinction  itself  between  the  'real ' 
and  the  '  unreal.'  And  in  order  to  do  this  he  has 
to  catch  both  '  reality '  and  '  unreality '  in  the 
making — i.e.,   in   that   midway   position    between 

(a)  merely   presented   object    or    suggestion,   and 

(b)  object  definitely  accepted  as  real  or  rejected  as 
unreal,  wherein  the  whole  process  of  thinking  and 


BELIEF  AND  VALUE  83 

of  conscious  experimenting  goes  on.  But  this  is 
simply  the  psychological  method  of  dealing  with 
the  thinking  process.  We  have  already  seen  *  that 
the  psychologist  must  take  cognizance  of  the  dis- 
tinction between  truth  and  error ;  and  now  it  ap- 
pears that  the  psychological  method,  which  treats 
thought  as  a  personal  and  temporal  process,  does 
not  merely  allow  us  to  deal  with  the  cognate  dis- 
tinction of  '  real '  and  '  unreal,'  it  is  the  only 
method  that  enables  us  to  do  so.  Hence,  instead  of 
logic  being  sharply  differentiated  from  psychology 
(as  absolutists  have  fondly  imagined)  by  possessing 
a  monopoly  in  this  fundamental  distinction,  it  turns 
out  that  to  abstract  from  time  and  personality  is  to 
abstract  also  from  the  consideration  of  judgment  as 
true-or-false.  A  '  logic  '  that  '  emancipates  '  itself 
from  psychology,  therefore,  will  be  a  '  logic '  which, 
in  repudiating  its  raison  d'etre,  sinks  to  the  level  of  a 
mere  grammatical  exercise.  Thus,  by  bringing  out, 
in  his  chapter  on  '  The  Perception  of  Reality,'  the 
thoroughly  psychological  character  of  the  distinc- 
tion between  the  '  real '  and  the  '  unreal,'  James 
is  laying  the  foundations  of  a  real  logic  that  is 
to  deal  with  the  problems  of  real  knowing.  The 
history  of  '  logic,'  before  James,  is  simply  the 
trail    of    its    weary    wanderings    in    the    infruc- 

*  P.  69  /. 


84  WILLIAM  JAMES 

tuous  deserts  of  formalism  and  verbalism.*  Now 
at  last  logic  is  brought  definitely  within  sight  of 
the  promised  land  of  real  knowledge,  which  the 
mere  men  of  science  who,  fortunately  for  them- 
selves, knew  not  '  logic '  have  for  centuries  been 
quietly  cultivating.  At  the  same  time  that  he 
rescues  logic  from  formalism,  James  makes  clear 
the  impossibility  of  defining  psychology  as  the 
science  of  the  '  subjective '  in  any  sense  that 
simply  excludes  the  '  objective.'  The  extracts  we 
now  give  will  illustrate  also  the  psychological 
impossibility  of  correlating  real  objectivity  with 
'  pure  intellectuality  ' — i.e.,  with  intellect  purged 
of  emotional  interest : 

"  The  total  world  of  which  the  philosophers  must 
take  account  is  .  .  .  composed  of  the  realities  plus 
the  fancies  and  illusions.  Two  sub-universes  at 
least,  connected  by  relations  which  philosophy  tries 
to  ascertain !  Keally  there  are  more  than  two 
sub-universes  of  which  we  take  account,  some  of  us 
of  this  one,  and  others  of  that.  For  there  are 
various  categories  of  illusion  and  of  reality,  and 
alongside  of  the  world  of  absolute  error  (i.e.,  error 
confined  to  single  individuals),  but  still  within  the 

*  Even  Mill,  keenly  as  he  felt  the  defects  of  formalism, 
fell  a  victim  to  it  in  his  '  inductive  logic'  See  Dr.  F.  C.  S. 
Schiller's  Formal  Logic,  p.  261/. 


BELIEF  AND  VALUE  85 

world  of  absolute  reality  (i.e.,  reality  believed  by 
the  complete  philosopher),  there  is  the  world  of 
collective  error,  there  are  the  worlds  of  abstract 
reality,  of  relative  or  practical  reality,  of  ideal 
relations,  and  there  is  the  supernatural  world. 
The  popular  mind  conceives  of  all  these  sub-worlds 
more  or  less  disconnectedly ;  and  when  dealing 
with  one  of  them,  forgets  for  the  time  being  its 
relations  to  the  rest.  The  complete  philosopher 
is  he  who  seeks  not  only  to  assign  to  every  given 
object  of  his  thought  its  right  place  in  one  or  other 
of  these  sub- worlds,  but  he  also  seeks  to  determine 
the  relation  of  each  sub-world  to  the  others  in  the 
total  world  which  is."  * 

"  Every  object  we  think  of  gets  at  last  referred 
to  one  world  or  another  of  this  or  of  some  similar 
list.  .  .  .  Each  world,  whilst  it  is  attended  to,  is  real 
after  its  own  fashion,  only  the  reality  lapses  with 
the  attention. 

"  Each  thinker,  however  [note  how  concretely 
James  speaks,  and  avoids  '  the  '  generalized  mind] , 
has  dominant  habits  of  attention ;  and  these 
practically  elect  from  among  the  various  worlds  some 
one  to  be  for  him  the  world  of  ultimate  realities. 
From  this  world's  objects  he  does  not  appeal. 
Whatever  positively  contradicts  them  must  get  into 
another  world  or  die.  .  .  . 

*  Principles,  vol.  ii.,  p.  291. 


8(5  WILLIAM  JAMES 

"  In  all  this  the  everlasting  partiality  of  our 
nature  shows  itself,  our  inveterate  propensity  to 
choice.  For,  in  the  strict  and  ultimate  sense  of 
the  word  existence,  everything  which  can  be 
thought  of  at  all  exists  as  some  sort  of  object, 
whether  mythical  object,  individual  thinker's 
object,  or  object  in  outer  space  and  for  intelligence 
at  large.  .  .  .  The  mere  fact  of  appearing  as  an 
object  at  all  is  not  enough  to  constitute  reality. 
That  may  be  metaphysical  reality,  reality  for  God  ; 
but  what  we  need  is  practical  reality,  reality  for 
ourselves ;  and  to  have  that  an  object  must  not 
only  appear,  but  it  must  appear  both  interesting 
and  important.  The  worlds  whose  objects  are 
neither  interesting  nor  important  we  treat  simply 
negatively,  we  brand  them  as  ?mreal. 

"  In  the  relative  sense,  then,  the  sense  in  which 
we  contrast  reality  with  simple  ?/»reality,  and  in 
which  one  thing  is  said  to  have  more  reality  than 
another,  and  to  be  more  believed,  reality  means 
simply  relation  to  our  emotional  and  active  life. 
This  is  the  only  sense  which  the  word  ever  has  in 
the  mouths  of  practical  men.  .  .  . 

"  The  fons  et  origo  of  all  reality,  whether  from  the 
absolute  or  the  practical  point  of  view,  is  thus  sub- 
jective, is  ourselves.  As  bare  logical  thinkers,  with- 
out emotional  reaction,  we  give  reality  to  whatever 


BELIEF  AND  VALUE  87 

objects  we  think  of,  for  they  are  really  phenomena, 
or  objects  of  our  passing  thought,  if  nothing  more. 
But,  as  thinkers  with  emotional  reaction,  we  give 
what  seems  to  us  a  still  higher  degree  of  reality  to 
whatever  things  we  select  and  emphasize  and  turn  to 
with  a  will.  .  .  . 

"  We  reach  thus  the  important  conclusion  that 
our  own  reality,  that  sense  of  our  own  life  which  we  at 
every  moment  possess,  is  the  idtimate  of  idtimates  for 
our  belief.  ...  As  Descartes  made  the  indubitable 
reality  of  the  cogito  go  bail  for  the  reality  of  all 
that  the  cogito  involved,  so  we  all  of  us,  feeling  our 
own  present  reality  with  absolutely  coercive  force, 
ascribe  an  all  but  equal  degree  of  reality,  first  to 
whatever  things  we  lay  hold  on  with  a  sense  of 
personal  need,  and  second  to  whatever  further 
things  continuously  belong  with  these.  .  .  . 

"  The  world  of  living  realities  as  contrasted  with 
unrealities  is  thus  anchored  in  the  Ego,  considered 
as  an  active  and  emotional  term.  .  .  .  Whatever 
things  have  intimate  and  continuous  connection  with 
my  life  are  things  of  whose  reality  I  cannot  doubt. 
Whatever  things  fail  to  establish  this  connection 
are  things  which  are  practically  no  better  for  me 
than  if  they  existed  not  at  all."* 

"  The    merely   conceived    or    imagined   objects 
*  Op.  cit.,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  293-298. 


88  WILLIAM  JAMES 

which  our  mind  represents  as  hanging  to  the 
sensations  (causing  them,  etc.),  filling  the  gaps 
between  them,  and  weaving  their  interrupted  chaos 
into  order,  are  innumerable.  Whole  systems  of 
them  conflict  with  other  systems,  and  our  choice  of 
which  system  shall  carry  our  belief  is  governed  by 
principles  which  are  simple  enough,  however  subtle 
and  difficult  may  be  their  application  to  details. 
The  conceived  system,  to  pass  for  true,  must  at  least 
include  the  reality  of  the  sensible  objects  in  it,  by 
explaining  them  as  effects  on  us,  if  nothing  more. 
The  system  which  includes  the  most  of  them,  and 
definitely  explains,  or  pretends  to  explain,  the  most  of 
them,  will,  ceteris  paribus,  prevail.  It  is  needless  to 
say  how  far  mankind  still  is  from  having  excogi- 
tated such  a  system.  But  the  various  materialisms, 
idealisms,  and  hylozoisms  show  with  what  industry 
the  attempt  is  for  ever  made.  It  is  conceivable 
that  several  rival  theories  should  equally  well 
include  the  actual  order  of  our  sensations  in  their 
scheme,  much  as  the  one-fluid  and  two-fluid 
theories  of  electricity  formulated  all  the  common 
electrical  phenomena  equally  well.  The  sciences 
are  full  of  these  alternatives.  Which  theory  is,  then, 
to  be  believed  ?  That  theory  will  be  most  generally 
believed  which,  besides  offering  us  objects  able  to 
account  satisfactorily  for  our  sensible  experience,  also 


BELIEF  AND  VALUE  89 

offers  those  which  are  most  interesting ,  those  which 
appeal  most  urgently  to  our  (esthetic,  emotional,  and 
active  needs.  So  here,  in  the  higher  intellectual 
life,  the  same  selection  among  general  conceptions 
goes  on  which  went  on  among  the  sensations  them- 
selves. .  .  . 

"  A  philosophy  whose  principle  is  so  incom- 
mensurate with  our  most  intimate  powers  as  to 
deny  them  all  relevancy  in  universal  affairs,  as  to 
annihilate  their  motives  at  one  blow,  will  be  even 
more  unpopular  than  pessimism.  Better  face  the 
enemy  than  the  eternal  Void !  This  is  why 
materialism  will  always  fail  of  universal  adoption, 
however  well  it  may  fuse  things  into  an  atomistic 
unity,  however  clearly  it  may  prophesy  the  future 
eternity.  For  materialism  denies  reality  to  the 
objects  of  almost  all  the  impulses  which  we  most 
cherish.  The  real  meaning  of  the  impulses,  it  says, 
is  something  which  has  no  emotional  interest  for 
us  whatever.  But  what  is  called  extradition  is 
quite  as  characteristic  of  our  emotions  as  of  our 
sense.  Both  point  to  an  object  as  the  cause  of  the 
present  feeling.  What  an  intensely  objective 
reference  lies  in  fear !  In  like  manner  an 
enraptured  man,  a  dreary-feeling  man,  are  not 
simply  aware  of  their  subjective  states;  if  they 
were,  the  force  of  their  feelings  would  evaporate. 


90  WILLIAM  JAMES 

Both  believe  there  is  outward  cause  why  they 
should  feel  as  they  do  :  either,  '  It  is  a  glad  world  ! 
how  good  is  life  !'  or,  '  What  a  loathsome  tedium 
is  existence  !'  Any  philosophy  which  annihilates 
the  validity  of  the  reference  by  explaining  away  its 
objects,  or  translating  them  into  terms  of  no 
emotional  pertinency,  leaves  the  mind  with  little  to 
care  or  act  for.  This  is  the  opposite  condition 
from  that  of  nightmare,  but  when  acutely  brought 
home  to  consciousness,  it  produces  a  kindred  horror. 
In  nightmare  we  have  motives  to  act,  but  no 
power ;  here  we  have  powers,  but  no  motives.  A 
nameless  Unheinlihkeit  comes  over  us  at  the 
thought  of  there  being  nothing  eternal  in  our 
final  purposes,  in  the  objects  of  those  loves  and 
aspirations  which  are  our  deepest  energies.  The 
monstrously  lop-sided  equation  of  the  universe  and 
its  knower,  which  we  postulate  as  the  ideal  of 
cognition,  is  perfectly  paralleled  by  the  no  less  lop- 
sided equation  of  the  universe  and  the  doer.  We 
demand  in  it  a  character  for  which  our  emotions 
and  active  propensities  shall  be  a  match.  Small 
as  we  are,  minute  as  is  the  point  by  which  the 
Cosmos  impinges  upon  each  one  of  us,  each  one 
desires  to  feel  that  his  reaction  at  that  point 
is  congruous  with  the  demands  of  the  vast 
whole,   that   he  balances  the  latter,  so  to  speak, 


BELIEF  AND  VALUE  91 

and  is  able  to  do  what  it  expects  of  him.  But  his 
abilities  to  '  do '  lie  wholly  in  the  line  of  his 
natural  propensities.  As  he  enjoys  reaction  with 
such  emotions  as  fortitude,  hope,  rapture,  admira- 
tion, earnestness,  and  the  like;  and  as  he  very 
unwillingly  reacts  with  fear,  disgust,  despair,  or 
doubt — a  philosophy  which  should  legitimate  only 
emotions  of  the  latter  sort  would  be  sure  to  leave 
the  mind  a  prey  to  discontent  and  craving. 

"  It  is  far  too  little  recognized  how  entirely  the 
intellect  is  built  up  of  practical  interests.  The 
theory  of  Evolution  is  beginning  to  do  very  gocd 
service  by  its  reduction  of  all  mentality  to  the  type 
c.f  reflex  action.  Cognition,  in  this  view,  is  but  a 
fleeting  moment,  a  cross-section  at  a  certain  point 
of  what  in  its  totality  is  a  motor  phenomenon. 
In  lower  forms  of  life  no  one  will  pretend  that 
cognition  is  anything  more  than  a  guide  to  appro- 
priate action.  The  germinal  question  concerning 
things  brought  for  the  first  time  before  conscious- 
ness is  not  the  theoretic  '  What  is  that  ?'  but  the 
practical  '  Who  goes  there  ?'  or  rather,  as  Horwicz 
has  admirably  put  it,  '  What  is  to  be  done  T — 
'  Was  fang'  ichanV  In  all  our  discussions  about 
the  lower  animals  the  only  test  we  use  is  that  of 
their  acting  as  if  for  a  purpose.  Cognition,  in 
short,  is  incomplete  until  discharged  in  act.     And 


92  WILLIAM  JAMES 

although  it  is  true  that  the  later  mental  develop- 
ment, which  attains  its  maximum  through  the 
hypertrophied  cerebrum  of  man,  gives  birth  to  a 
vast  amount  of  theoretic  activity  over  and  above 
that  which  is  immediately  ministerial  to  practice, 
yet  the  earlier  claim  is  only  postponed,  not  effaced, 
and  the  active  nature  asserts  its  rights  to  the 
end.  .  .  . 

"  If  we  survey  the  field  of  history  and  ask  what 
feature  all  great  periods  of  revival,  of  expansion  of 
the  human  mind,  display  in  common,  we  shall  find, 
I  think,  simply  this  :  that  each  and  all  of  them 
have  said  to  the  human  being,  '  The  inmost  nature 
of  the  reality  is  congenial  to  powers  which  you 
possess.' 

"  In  8e  and  per  se  the  universal  essence  has  hardly 
been  more  defined  by  any  of  these  formulae  than  by 
the  agnostic  x;  but  the  mere  assurance  that  my 
powers,  such  as  they  are,  are  not  irrelevant  to  it, 
but  pertinent,  that  it  speaks  to  them  and  will  in 
some  way  recognize  their  reply,  that  I  can  be  a 
match  for  it  if  I  will,  and  not  a  footless  waif,  suffices 
to  make  it  rational  to  my  feeling  in  the  sense  given 
above.  Nothing  could  be  more  absurd  than  to  hope 
for  the  definitive  triumph  of  any  philosophy  which 
should  refuse  to  legitimate,  and  to  legitimate  in 
an  emphatic  manner,  the  more   powerful  of  our 


BELIEF  AND  VALUE  93 

emotional  and  practical  tendencies.  Fatalism, 
whose  solving  word  in  all  crises  of  behaviour  is 
'  All  striving  is  vain,'  will  never  reign  supreme, 
for  the  impulse  to  take  life  strivingly  is  indestruct- 
ible in  the  race.  Moral  creeds  which  speak  to  that 
impulse  will  be  widely  successful  in  spite  of  incon- 
sistency, vagueness,  and  shadowy  determination  of 
expectancy.  Man  needs  a  rule  for  his  will,  and 
will  invent  one  if  one  be  not  given  him."* 

In  short,  beliefs  which  a  man  cannot  live  with 
he  has  no  option  but  to  discard  ;  beliefs  he  cannot 
live  without  he  must  find  reasons  to  adopt.  These 
too  are  corollaries  from  Darwinism,  which  philo- 
sophic theories  must  assimilate  if  they  themselves 

are  to  live. 

*  Op.  cit.,  pp.  311-315. 


CHAPTEK  IX 

THE    PRACTICAL    VALUE    OF    THEORY    AND    THE 
THEORETIC    VALUE    OF    PRACTICE 

If  it  be  asked  why  so  much  space  has  been  devoted 
to  the  psychology  of  James,  the  answer  is  simple. 
The  revolution  that  James's  philosophy  effects  con- 
sists precisely  in  breaking  down  the  barrier  between 
philosophy  and  psychology.  Hence,  his  Principles 
of  Psychology  is  by  far  the  most  truly  philosophical 
work  that  he  has  produced  ;  and,  in  fact,  all  his 
subsequent  work  consists  in  popularizing  and 
applying  his  psychological  discoveries.  He  has 
neither  reduced  metaphysics  to  psychology,  nor 
dissolved  psychology  in  metaphysics.  Nor,  again, 
has  he  anywhere  indulged  in  the  intellectual  game 
of  deducing  a  priori  what  must  '  necessarily  '  be 
the  relation  between  these  two  disciplines.  What 
he  has  done  is  to  transform  the  whole  philosophic 
outlook  by  restoring  to  psychology  a  vast  territory 
which  in  virtue  of  the  traditional  distinction  between 
metaphysics  and   psychology  it  fell   to   neither  of 

94 


THEOEY  AND  PEACTICE  95 

these  to  explore.  Since  metaphysics  and  psy- 
chology between  them  laid  claim  to  the  whole  realm 
of  Reality,  this  particular  territory  had  been  auto- 
matically made  to  appear  as  the  locus  of  mere 
subjective  illusion.  But  the  territory  in  question 
is  that  of  real  life  and  action;  it  is  the  home  of 
human  personality  and  will. 

Whether  this  new  world,  of  which  James  was 
the  philosophic  Columbus,  is  to  be  assigned  to 
psychology  or  to  philosophy,  or  whether  a  new 
name  should  be  found  for  such  virgin  soil,  to  disso- 
ciate its  cultivators  from  the  intellectual  scandals 
of  the  past,  need  not  now  be  definitely  decided. 
We  may  retain,  provisionally  and  without  preju- 
dice, the  verbally  honorific  name  of  '  philosophic  ' 
for  any  inquiry  into  the  nature  of  reality  that 
cannot  conveniently  be  designated  as  '  purely 
scientific' 

Using  the  word  '  philosophy '  in  this  inten- 
tionally vague  sense,  which  alone  will  enable  us 
to  include,  e.g.,  Hegel's  speculations  concerning  the 
causes  of  the  moon's  sterility  in  the  same  field  of 
study  with  James's  defence  of  the  freedom  of  the 
will,  we  may  delineate  James's  philosophy  as 
follows :  It  essentially  consists  in  the  discovery 
that,  under  cover  of  an  assumed  distinction  between 
philosophy   and    psychology,   all    the    most   vital 


96  WILLIAM  JAMES 

questions  of  philosophy — questions  concerning  the 
nature  of  truth,  of  freedom,  and  of  the  meaning 
of  life — have  been  either  burked  or  begged — an  J 
begged,  moreover,  in  the  interests  of  no  one  but 
the  sceptic  and  the  pessimist.  For  what  purported 
to  be  purely  rational  deductions  about  reality 
turn  out  to  be  nothing  but  the  unfolding  of  the 
implications  latent  in  this  arbitrary  distinction,  or 
else  ingenious  attempts  to  disguise  these  implica- 
tions. When  once  one  has  detected  the  trick  of  this 
intellectual  legerdemain,  one  can  no  longer  doubt 
the  greatness  of  James's  contribution  to  philosophy. 
The  intellectualist  tradition  which  James  con- 
troverts attains  its  apogee,  or  maximum  remoteness 
from  anything  that  has  meaning  for  denizens  of 
the  earth,  in  the  '  monism '  that  claims  the  title 
of  Absolute  or  Objective  Idealism.  This  system 
had,  when  James  began  to  write,  attained  such  a 
pitch  of  academic  orthodoxy  that  any  dissentient 
was  promptly  told  he  was  '  no  philosopher.'  It 
required  therefore  no  small  degree  of  courage  to 
declare :  "  I  myself  have  come,  by  long  brooding 
over  it  [i.e.  the  antithesis  of  monism  and  pluralism], 
to  consider  it  the  most  central  of  all  philosophic 
problems,  central  because  so  pregnant.  I  mean  by 
this,  that  if  you  know  whether  a  man  is  a  decided 
monist  or  a  decided  pluralist,  you  perhaps  know 


THEOEY  AND  PEACTICE  97 

more  about  the  rest  of  his  opinions  than  if  you 
give  him  any  other  name  ending  in  ist.  To  believe 
in  the  one  or  in  the  many,  that  is  the  classification 
with  the  maximum  number  of  consequences."  * 

For  this  monism,  the  essence  of  rationality  con- 
sists in  conceiving  the  universe  as  a  rigid  logical 
system,  or  (in  James's  phrase)  as  a  'block-universe,' 
in  which  every  part  is  determined  through-and- 
through  by  its  relation  to  the  whole.  In  such  a 
system  the  distinction  between  past,  present,  and 
future  is  avowedly  illusory,  and  altogether  irrele- 
vant to  the  central  core  of  reality.  So  far  as  mun- 
dane events  are  allowed  to  have  reality — and  hoiv 
far  they  have  any  is  treated  as  a  trivial  and 
almost  frivolous  question,  on  which  serious  philo- 
sophy is  under  no  obligation  to  make  up  its  mind — 
future  events  are  just  as  real,  and  just  as  fixed  as 
the  whole  past.  So  far  as  the  historical  process  is 
real,  it  is  the  '  progressive  revelation '  or  '  mani- 
festation '    (illuminating  phrase !)   of   what   in  its 

*  Pragmatism,  p.  129.  Cf.  Some  Problems  of  Philosojrfty, 
p.  114/.  :  "The  alternative  between  pluralism  and  monism 
...  is  the  most  pregnant  of  all  the  dilemmas  of  philosophy, 
although  it  is  only  in  our  time  that  it  has  been  articulated 
distinctly.  Does  reality  exist  distributively  or  collectively  in 
the  shape  of  caches,  every  8,  anys,  eithers,  or  only  in  the 
shape  of  an  all  or  whole  /  Pluralism  stands  for  the  dis- 
tributive, monism  for  the  collective  form,  of  being." 

7 


98  WILLIAM  JAMES 

essential  '  logical '  nature  is  a  perfect  and  timeless 
Whole. 

The  direct  and  intentional  result  of  this  monistic 
view,  is  to  reduce  to  a  sheer  illusion  that  power  of 
individual  initiative  which  each  of  us  seems  to  him- 
self to  possess.  It  is  an  illusion  bound  up  with 
the  equally  illusory  sense  of  distinct  personality 
with  which  every  sane  human  being  is  incurably 
afflicted.  Yet  even  the  philosopher  who  officially 
deplores  this  distressing  superstition  does  not 
pretend  to  set  it  aside  in  his  daily  life.  He  merely 
admits  that  his  '  theory '  is  at  war  with  his 
practical  needs.  In  his  own  eyes,  however,  this 
admission  must  confirm,  rather  than  invalidate, 
the  '  theory.'  For,  ex  vi  definitionis,  '  pure  '  theory 
not  only  need  not,  but  must  not,  be  influenced  by 
practical  considerations.  The  more  unequivocally, 
then,  a  '  theory '  reduces  practice  to  illusion,  the 
more  fitting  shrine  does  it  become  for  philosophic 
*  truth.' 

The  protests  of  practice,  therefore,  affect  the 
absolutist  not  at  all.  And  if  once  we  allow  this 
disjunction  between  theory  and  practice  (which  has 
disastrously  dominated  philosophy  since  the  time 
of  Aristotle),  and  identify  reason  with  'pure 
theory,'  we  can  never  hope  to  vanquish  Absolutism 
by  purely  *  rational '  or  '  theoretic  '  argument.     For 


THEOKY  AND  PRACTICE  99 

Absolutism  is  in  very  truth  the  objectification  of 
this  idea  of  'pure  theory.'  To  a  mind  so  steeped 
(however  unconsciously)  in  the  traditions  of  Formal 
Logic  as  is  the  mind  of  the  absolutist,  to  attack 
the  theory  mast  seem  to  be  attacking  Reason  itself. 
If  the  monistic  principle  really  is  the  '  presuppo- 
sition '  of  rational  knowledge,  then  merely  to 
question  it  is  to  be  guilty  of  self-contradiction. 
Thus  monism,  all  the  more  because  it  is  prac- 
tically intolerable,  seemed  to  be  theoretically  irre- 
pressible. 

Hence,  as  James  points  out,  "  the  world's  one- 
ness has  generally  been  affirmed  ...  as  if  any- 
one who  questioned  it  must  be  an  idiot.  The 
temper  of  monists  has  been  so  vehement  as  almost 
at  times  to  be  convulsive.  .  .  .  The  theory  of  the 
Absolute,  in  particular,  has  had  to  be  an  article  of 
faith,  affirmed  dogmatically  and  exclusively.  The 
One  and  All  first  in  the  order  of  being  and  of 
knowing,  logically  necessary  itself,  and  uniting  all 
lesser  things  in  the  bonds  of  mutual  necessity,  how 
could  it  allow  of  any  mitigation  of  its  inner 
rigidity  ?  The  slightest  suspicion  of  pluralism, 
the  minutest  wiggle  of  independence  of  any  one 
of  its  parts  from  the  control  of  the  totality,  would 
ruin  it.  Absolute  unity  brooks  no  degrees — as  well 
might  you   claim   absolute  purity   for  a  glass  of 


100  WILLIAM  JAMES 

water  because  it  contains  but  a  single  little  cholera 
germ.  The  independence,  however  infinitesimal, 
of  a  part,  however  small,  would  be  to  the  Absolute 
as  fatal  as  a  cholera  germ."  * 

But  if  Absolute  Idealism  thus  easily  survives,  as 
a  '  theory,'  any  conflict  with  our  practical  interests, 
it  is  not  so  easy,  once  the  illusions  of  practice  have 
been  systematically  discounted,  to  discover  what 
positive  significance  that  theory  retains.  For  what 
thus  survives  is  not  the  concrete  vision  of  all  reality 
which  we  were  promised  at  the  outset,  but  just  the 
magic  word  *  Universe.'  That  the  world  is  '  some- 
how '  (i.e.,  inexplicably)  '  one,'  turns  out  to  be  the 
sole  content  of  '  metaphysic'  Thus  Absolutism,  if 
judged  by  its  performance  and  not  by  its  jwofessions, 
shrivels  to  a  bare  negation  of  the  reality  alike  of 
human  knowledge  and  of  freedom.^  If,  in  perusing 
any  idealistic  work,  we  skip  all  the  preliminary 
subtleties  about  the  'necessary  conditions  of  the 
possibility  of  knowledge,'  the  perfect  '  rationality 
of  the  real,'  the  absurdity  of  the  conception  of  the 
'  Unknowable,'  and  so  forth,  and  turn  expectantly 

*  Pragmatism,  p.  159/. 

f  Cf.  Some  Problems  of  Philosophy,  p.  139  :  "  Possi- 
bility, as  distinguished  from  necessity  on  the  one  hand,  and 
from  impossibility  on  the  other,  is  an  essential  category 
of  human  thinking.  For  monism,  it  is  a  pure  illusion." 
Italics  mine.] 


f 


THEOEY  AND  PRACTICE  101 

to  the  final  revelation  of  reality  as  it  really  is,  all  it 
ever  comes  to  is  something  of  this  sort : 

"  The  consummation  of  the  infinite  aim  consists 
merely  in  removing  the  illusion  which  makes  it 
seem  yet  unaccomplished.  Good  and  absolute 
goodness  is  eternally  accomplishing  itself  in  the 
world,  and  the  result  is  that  it  needs  not  wait  upon 
us,  but  is  already  .  .  .  accomplished.  It  is  an 
illusion  under  which  we  live.  ...  In  the  course  of 
its  process  the  Idea  makes  itself  that  illusion,  by 
setting  an  antithesis  to  confront  it,  and  its  action 
consists  in  getting  rid  of  the  illusion  which  it  has 
created."* 

The  Idea,  then,  succeeds  in  undeceiving  Itself. 
But  not  us.  Our  humble  role  is  merely  to  form  a 
screen  on  which  the  illusion  shall  continue  for  ever 
to  be  displayed,  in  order  that  the  Infinitely  Knowing 
Absolute  may  enjoy  the  exquisite  triumph  of  seeing 
through  it !  Such  is  the  Idealist's  final  definition 
of  '  perfect  rationality,'  such  the  fulfilment  of 
his  promise  to  make  reality  transparent  to  our 
intelligence. 

*  Hegel,  quoted  by  James  in  A  Pluralistic  Universe, 
p.  51  /.  Of  the  English  Idealists,  Mr.  F.  H.  Bradley  has 
been  most  commended  for  the  scholarly  thoroughness  with 
which  he  reduces  the  world  we  live  in  and  its  inhabitants  to 
'  mere)  appearance,'  leaving  to  the  Absolute  the  whole  credit 
of  reconstituting  Reality  '  somehow.' 


102  WILLIAM  JAMES 

It  follows,  however,  that  in  its  own  queer  way 
Absolutism  has  anticipated  James's  humanistic 
protest :  to  admit  a  radical  contrast  between  the 
human  and  the  absolute  'point  of  view'  is  to 
admit  that  in  actual  human  knowledge  "you  can't 
weed  out  the  human  contribution."  James  has 
therefore  only  to  repeat  what  his  Psychology  had 
already  established,  and  to  point  out  that  "our 
nouns  and  adjectives  are  all  humanized  heirlooms, 
and  in  the  theories  we  build  them  into,  the  inner 
order  and  arrangement  is  wholly  dictated  by  human 
considerations,  intellectual  consistency  being  one  of 
them.  Mathematics  and  logic  themselves  are 
fermenting  with  human  rearrangements :  physics, 
astronomy,  and  biology  follow  massive  cues  of 
preference.  We  plunge  forward  into  the  field  of 
fresh  experience  with  the  beliefs  our  ancestors  and 
we  have  made  already ;  these  determine  what  we 
notice ;  what  we  notice  determines  what  we  do ; 
what  we  do  again  determines  what  we  experience ; 
so  from  one  thing  to  another,  although  the  stubborn 
fact  remains  that  there  is  a  sensible  flux,  what  is 
true  of  it  seems  from  first  to  last  to  be  largely  a 
matter  of  our  own  creation."  * 

Nothing  of  all  this  can  be  denied  by  Idealists. 
Only,  what  James,  in  common  with  the  man  of 
*  Pragmatism,  p.  254/. 


THEORY  AND  PRACTICE  103 

action  and  the  scientist,  calls  'truth,'  the  Idealist 
insists  on  calling  '  illusion ' — precisely  because  it 
is  the  embodiment  of  characteristically  human 
aims  and  achievements.  James's  contention,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  that  there  is  nothing  in  the 
'  nature  of  truth  '  that  compels  us  to  keep  '  truth  ' 
as  a  name  for  something  that  we  can  ex  hypothesi 
never  know.  In  his  view,  to  be  verified  by  man 
is  the  essential  function  of  truth,  in  the  only  sense 
in  which  truth  can  be  an  object  of  man's  rational 
desire.  What  is  in  essence  incapable  of  entering 
the  human  consciousness  can  have  for  us  no  truth 
nor  even  meaning.  "  True  ideas  are  those  that  we 
can  assimilate,  validate,  corroborate,  and  verify. 
False  ideas  are  those  that  we  can  not.  That  is  the 
practical  difference  it  makes  to  us  to  have  true 
ideas;  that,  therefore,  is  the  meaning  of  truth,  for 
it  is  all  that  truth  is  known-as."  * 

This  pragmatic  view  has  been  denounced  by 
Idealists,  almost  in  the  same  breath,  as  being  both 
purely  commercial  and  purely  sceptical.  The 
reader  must  judge  for  himself  as  to  which  of  the 
two  opposing  theories  of  Absolutism  and  Humanism 
best  deserves  the  name  of  Scepticism ;  as  also 
whether  the  two  counts  of  this  indictment  can  be 
consistently  combined  by  the  soi-disant  believers  in 
*  Pragmatism,  p.  201. 


104  WILLIAM  JAMES 

the  '  perfect  coherence  '  of  truth.  And,  finally,  he 
should  ask  himself  why  a  doctrine  which  maintains, 
as  Humanism  maintains  against  Absolutism,  that 
human  ideals  must  really  count  in  the  making  of 
reality,  is  regarded  as  low  and  spiritually  degrading. 
Is  it  not,  rather,  clear  that  Humanism,  by  ques- 
tioning the  absolutist  notion  of  '  truth,'  and  break- 
ing down  the  distinction  between  '  theory '  and 
'practice,'  vindicates  the  reality  of  that  whole 
world  of  life  and  action  which  Absolutism  had 
contemptuously  dismissed  as  '  mere  appearance '  ? 
Which  is  in  truth  the  nobler  destiny — to  take  an 
active  part  in  the  real  shaping  of  an  as  yet  un- 
certain future,  or  to  contemplate,  at  an  infinite 
distance,  the  Absolute's  beatific  vision  of  bogus 
existence  in  hallucinatory  time  ? 

We  can  now  trace  how  the  pre-Jamesian  con- 
ception of  '  psychology '  had  played  into  the  hands 
of  Absolutism  and  Materialism.  At  first  sight  it 
might  seem  that  psychology,  with  its  particular 
concern,  not  with  the  totality  of  things,  but  with 
the  '  individual  mind,'  was  naturally  apt  to  supply 
the  pluralistic  antidote  to  the  monistic  excesses  of 
Absolutism. 

And,  in  fact,  for  Locke,  who  was  practically  the 
first  (since  Protagoras)  to  conceive  that  the  human 
understanding   was    a    worthy   subject   of    human 


THEOKY  AND  PRACTICE  105 

study,  the  interest  of  the  study  lay  in  its  providing 
a  critical  check  on  the  human  propensity  towards 
fruitless  '  speculation '  and  meaningless  dogmatism. 
For  Locke,  psychology  and  philosophy  are  truly  one. 
But,  unfortunately,  Locke,  though  his  aims  were 
avowedly  humanistic  and  practical,  fell  into  the 
snare  of  regarding  pure  passivity  as  the  only  source 
for  our  knowledge  of  physical  reality.  When,  there- 
fore, Hume  showed  that  sensations,  simply  as  such, 
could  never  reveal  anything  beyond  themselves,  it 
seemed  an  unavoidable  conclusion  that  psychology, 
at  any  rate,  was  restricted  to  what  is  purely  '  sub- 
jective.' As  against  this  pure  '  subjectivity,'  it 
became  the  aim  of  philosophy  to  vindicate  for  its 
subject-matter  an  equally  pure  '  objectivity  ' — with 
what  result  we  have  already  seen. 

Thus,  for  the  sake  of  a  sharp  distinction  between 
the  '  subjective  '  and  the  '  objective,'  philosophy 
and  psychology  were  torn  apart.  Psychology 
became  a  '  natural  science,'  dealing  solely  with 
the  observable  concatenations  of  '  subjective  '  phe- 
nomena, and  loftily  forbidden  to  inquire  into  their 
cognitive  or  practical  value ;  while  philosophy 
became  so  4  objective '  as  to  cease  to  have  any 
significance  whatever  for  human  beings.  Through 
the  gap  thus  artificially  created,  the  whole  '  world 
of   practical  realities,'  in  James's  phrase,  slipped 


106  WILLIAM  JAMES 

out  of  sight  and  out  of  mind  altogether — so  far  as 
either  the  psychologist  or  the  philosopher  was  con- 
cerned. For  the  psychologist  had  become  as 
ambitious  in  his  own  way  as  the  philosopher  in 
his,  to  be  '  purely  theoretical '  and  undisturbed  in 
his  intellectual  contemplation  by  '  merely  practical ' 
considerations.  James's  philosophic  achievement, 
as  has  been  already  said,  consists  in  restoring  to 
us  our  own  world,  by  conceiving  consciousness  as 
essentially  a  means  of  action  and  adaptation. 

James  started  with  the  apercu  that  the  world  of 
practical  realities  is  what  we,  as  living  organisms, 
are  primarily  interested  in ;  and  his  psychological 
studies,  undertaken  without  any  subjectivistic  bias, 
further  revealed  to  him  that  the  most  recondite  and 
apparently  '  disinterested  '  theories  ultimately  de- 
rive whatever  meaning  they  possess  from  their 
applicability  to  this  world.  And  when  once  we 
have  got  so  far,  we  can  hardly  avoid  taking  the 
decisive  step  of  regarding  successful  application 
within  this  world  of  practical  realities  as  the  touch- 
stone of  truth.  Such  is  the  inner  meaning  of 
James's  '  pragmatic  theory  of  truth.' 

That  this  theory  raises,  as  well  as  solves,  pro- 
blems, James  was  well  aware :  pragmatism  could 
hardly  itself  claim  exemption  from  the  common 
lot  of  man  made  theories,  or  spring,  incorrigibly 


THEORY  AND  PRACTICE  107 

perfect,  from  its  creator's  brain.  At  the  same 
time,  before  a  pragmatist  can  admit  any  problem 
as  genuine  rather  than  verbal,  he  must  satisfy 
himself  as  to  its  effective  or  pragmatic  meaning. 
Pragmatism,  moreover,  alone  among  philosophies 
contains  within  itself  the  promise  and  potency  of 
its  own  development,  for  it  alone  refuses  to  make 
of  knowledge  a  unique  exception  to  the  evolutionary 
process.  This  indwelling  spirit  of  pragmatism — 
this  abiding  sense  of  the  progi-essiveness  and  human 
relevance  of  knowledge — a  sense  deeper  and  wider 
than  any  specific  doctrine  in  which  it  may  clothe 
itself — is  what  James  seems  pre-eminently  to  mean 
by  Humanism. 

"  As  I  apprehend  the  movement  towards 
humanism,  it  is  based  on  no  particular  discovery 
or  principle  that  can  be  driven  into  one  precise 
formula,  which  thereupon  can  be  impaled  upon  a 
logical  skewer.  It  is  much  more  like  one  of  those 
secular  changes  that  come  upon  public  opinion 
over-night,  as  it  were,  borne  upon  tides  '  too  full 
for  sound  or  foam,'  that  survive  all  the  crudities 
and  extravagances  of  their  advocates.  Such  have 
been  the  changes  from  aristocracy  to  democracy, 
from  classic  to  romantic  taste,  from  theistic  to 
pantheistic  feeling,  from  static  to  evolutionary  ways 
of  understanding    life — changes   of   which    we  all 


108  WILLIAM  JAMES 

have  been  spectators.  Scholasticism  still  opposes 
to  such  changes  the  method  of  confutation  by 
single  decisive  reasons,  showing  that  the  new  view 
involves  self  -  contradiction,  or  traverses  some 
fundamental  principle.  This  is  like  stopping  a 
river  by  planting  a  stick  in  the  middle  of  its  bed. 
Eound  your  obstacle  flows  the  water  and  'gets 
there  all  the  same.'  In  reading  [a  certain  critic] , 
I  am  not  a  little  reminded  of  those  Catholic 
writers  who  refute  Darwinism  by  telling  us  that 
higher  species  cannot  come  from  lower,  because 
minus  nequit  gignere  plus,  or  that  the  notion  of 
transformation  is  absurd,  for  it  implies  that  species 
tend  to  their  own  destruction,  and  that  would 
violate  the  principle  that  every  reality  tends  to 
persevere  in  its  own  shape.  The  point  of  view  is 
too  myopic,  too  tight  and  close  to  take  in  the 
inductive  argument.  You  cannot  settle  questions 
of  fact  by  formal  logic.  .  .  . 

"  The  one  condition  of  understanding  humanism 
is  to  become  inductive-minded  oneself,  to  drop 
rigorous  definitions,  and  follow  lines  of  least 
resistance  '  on  the  whole.'  .  .  .  For  humanism, 
conceiving  the  more  '  true '  as  the  more  '  satis- 
factory '  (Dewey's  term)  has  to  renounce  sincerely 
rectilinear  arguments  and  ancient  ideals  of  rigour 
and  finality.     It  is  in  just  this  temper  of  renuncia- 


THEORY  AND  PRACTICE  109 

tion,  so  different  from  that  of  pyrrhonistic  scepti- 
cism, that  the  spirit  of  humanism  essentially 
consists.  Satisfactoriness  has  to  be  measured  by 
a  multitude  of  standards,  of  which  some,  for  aught 
we  know,  may  fail  in  any  given  case ;  and  what  is 
'  more '  satisfactory  than  any  alternative  in  sight 
may  to  the  end  be  a  sum  of  pluses  and  minuses, 
concerning  which  we  can  only  trust  that  by  ulterior 
corrections  and  improvements  a  maximum  of  the 
one  and  a  minimum  of  the  other  may  some  day  be 
approached.  It  means  a  real  change  of  heart,  a 
break  with  absolutistic  hopes  [despair,  rather, 
James  should  have  said]  when  one  takes  up  this 
view  of  the  conditions  of  belief."* 

It  is  in  passages  like  this  that  James's  greatness 
is  displayed.  But  they  reveal  his  weakness  as  well 
as  his  strength.  The  complacency  with  which 
intellectualists  took  for  granted  that  their  (theo- 
retical) renunciation  of  all  other  interests  secured 
to  them  a  monopoly  of  intellect,  the  practical 
emptiness  of  their  '  theoretically '  perfect  '  sys- 
tems,' bred  in  James  such  a  horror  of  logic- 
chopping  and  system-making,  that  even  in  the 
privacy  of  his  own  mind  he  seems  to  have  shrunk 
from  pressing  home  the  dialectical  advantage 
*  Essays  in  Radical  Empiricism,  p.  245/. 


110  WILLIAM  JAMES 

secured  by  his  discovery — for  such  it  really  was — 
of  the  arbitrary  and  question -begging  nature  of  the 
antithesis  between  theory  and  practice.  He  took 
up,  instead,  the  pragmatically  magnificent,  but 
formally  untenable,  position  of  refusing  to  bow 
the  knee  to  a  '  Reason '  which  was  as  much  at 
war  with  the  needs  of  organic  as  of  moral  life.  He 
has  left  it  to  his  disciples  to  show  that  the  '  Logic ' 
which  he  contemned  was  hopelessly  vitiated  by  the 
intrinsic  looseness  and  incoherence  of  its  thought.* 
In  any  case,  a  rational  reformer  can  as  little  hope, 
and  need  as  little  care,  to  escape  the  charge  of 
blaspheming  Reason,  as  a  religious  reformer  the 
charge  of  blaspheming  the  Deity.  But  James's 
attempt  to  avoid  verbal  disputation  by  speaking 
to  his  adversaries  in  their  own  vocabulary  only 
had  the  effect  of  still  further  hardening  their 
hearts  and  encouraging  them  in  their  accusations 
of  irrationalism.t 

*  The  defects  of  rationalistic  'logic  have  now  been  set 
out  in  full  in  Dr.  F.  C.  S.  Schiller's  Formal  Logic.  But  the 
reconstruction  of  logic  on  the  basis  of  the  principle  that 
4  meaning  lies  in  application '  owes  its  inception  to  Mr. 
Alfred  Sidgwick. 

t  James  himself  eventually  recognized  that  the  mildness 
of  his  controversial  methods  presumed  too  much  alike  on  the 
"Christian  charity"  and  the  "secular  intelligence"  of  his 
opponents.      See  Preface  to    The   Meaning   of   Truth,  pp. 


THEORY  AND  PRACTICE  111 

This  rather  natural,  if  also  rather  unintelligent, 
misunderstanding  does  not  seem,  however,  to  be 
the  main  source  of  the  hatred  that  James  has 
inspired  in  professional  philosophers.  They  con- 
ceive his  philosophy  as  an  attack  upon  their 
dignity  and  status,  because  it  brings  philosophy 
down  from  the  clouds  to  earth,  and  places  living 
above  '  reflecting  ' — or,  rather,  regards  reflecting 
as  only  one,  rather  queer,  way  of  living,  to  be 
justified  ultimately,  if  at  all,  only  in  the  degree  in 
which  it  unifies,  not  the  '  universe,'  but  human 
interests  and  activities.  The  academic  mind  will 
always  resent  any  doubt  as  to  whether  the 
academic  life  is  its  own  justification,  and  the 
'  highest '  that  any  mind  can  possibly  conceive. 
And  to  crush  such  doubts  it  loves  to  fashion  its 
Absolute  very  much  in  the  image  of  a  Professor  of 
Logic. 

So  the  struggle  between  Humanism  and  Abso- 
lutism is  likely  to  rage  for  some  time  yet — in 
philosophic  circles.  But  outside  these  the  issue 
cannot  be  in  doubt.  The  human  spirit  will  never 
assimilate  the  abstruse  and  empty  abstractions  of 
which  academic  philosophy  grows  ever  fonder  as  it 
grows  more  specialized.  If,  therefore,  philosophy 
refuses  to  re-humanize  itself  in  the  spirit  of  James, 
it  will  deservedly  perish  from  its  neglect  of  human 


112  WILLIAM  JAMES 

interests.  If  '  Logic,'  unreformed  and  unrepentant, 
insists  on  severing  itself  from  Life,  then  Life  will 
gladly  let  it  go.  Nor  can  the  kind  of  '  theory  ' 
that  claims  to  be  independent  of  practice  with  any 
consistency  make  complaint  if  practice  retorts  by 
insisting  that  the  independence  must  be  mutual. 


BILLING   AND   SONS,    LTD.,    PRINTERS,   GUILDFORD 


RELIGIONS 

ANCIENT  AND  MODERN 

Presenting  the  salient  features  of  the  Great  Religions  of  the  Human 

Race. 
Fcap.  8vo.     is.  net  per  volume.     By  post,  is.  2d.  each. 

JUDAISM.    By  Israel  Abrahams. 

CELTIC  RELIGION.     By  Prof.  E.  Anwyl. 

SHINTO:  THE  ANCIENT  RELIGION  OF  JAPAN.  By 
W.  G.  Aston,  C.M.G.,  LL.D. 

THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  ROME.  By  Cyril 
Bailey,  M.A. 

HINDUISM.     By  Dr.  L.  D.  Barnett. 

THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  PALESTINE.  By  Stanley 
A.  Cook. 

ANIMISM.     By  Edward  Clodd. 

SCANDINAVIAN  RELIGION.    By  William  A.  Craigie. 

EARLY  BUDDHISM.    By  Prof.  T.  W.  Rhys  Davids,  LL.D. 

THE  RELIGIONS  OF  ANCIENT  CHINA.  By  Prof.  Giles, 
LL.D. 

MAGIC  AND  FETISHISM.     By  Dr.  A.  C.  Haddon,  F.R.S. 

THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  GREECE.  By  Jane 
Harrison,  Author  of  "Prolegomena  to  Study  of  Greek 
Religion." 

THE  PSYCHOLOGICAL  ORIGIN  AND  NATURE  OF 
RELIGION.     By  Prof.  J.  H.  Ledba. 

THE  RELIGION  OF  ANCIENT  EGYPT.  By  Prof.  W.  M. 
Flinders  Petrie,  F.R.S. 

PANTHEISM.     By  James  Allanson  Picton. 

THE  RELIGION  OF  BABYLONIA  AND  ASSYRIA.     By 

Theophilus  G.  Pinches. 

EARLY  CHRISTIANITY  (PAUL  TO  ORIGEN).  By  S.  B. 
Slack. 

THE  MYTHOLOGIES  OF  ANCIENT  MEXICO  AND 
PERU.     By  Lewis  Spenck,  M.A. 

THE    MYTHOLOGY    OF    ANCIENT    BRITAIN    AND 

IRELAND.    By  Charles  Squire. 
ISLAM.     By  Ameer  Ali  Syed,  M.A.,  CLE. 

London:  CONSTABLE  &  CO.   Ltd.   io  Orange  Street  W.C. 


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